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THE PALGRAVE HANDBOOK
OF POLITICAL ELITES

Edited by
Heinrich Best and John Higley
The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites
 Heinrich Best • John Higley
Editors

The Palgrave
Handbook of Political
Elites
Section Editors

Maurizio Cotta
Jean-Pascal Daloz
Ursula Hoffmann-Lange
Jan Pakulski
Elena Semenova
Editors
Heinrich Best John Higley
Friedrich-Schiller-University University of Texas at Austin
Jena, Germany Austin, TX, USA

Section Editors
Maurizio Cotta Jean-Pascal Daloz
University of Siena Strasbourg University
Siena, Italy Strasbourg Cedex, France

Ursula Hoffmann-Lange Jan Pakulski

University of Bamberg University of Tasmania
Bamberg, Germany Hobart, Tasmania, Australia

Elena Semenova
Free University of Berlin
Berlin, Germany

ISBN 978-1-137-51903-0 ISBN 978-1-137-51904-7 (eBook)

DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-51904-7

Library of Congress Control Number: 2017952168

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018

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 Acknowledgments

The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites is the first to survey this long-
established and highly developed field of empirical research and theoretical
investigation. Given the field’s maturity and diversity, it was a challenging task
to conceive, organize, and carry out a comprehensive inventory of scholarly
accomplishments in the study of political elites.
To achieve this aim required a broad mobilization of experts in the field, so
that 35 scholars finally joined as contributors. We thank them for their
readiness to share their expertise, submit to the often tedious task of producing
standardized texts within the format restrictions of a handbook, and meet
deadlines. We offer particular thanks to the section editors who were largely
responsible for recruiting, instructing, and working with contributors. Most
importantly, we give special and personal thanks to Verona Christmas-Best for
the unenviable task of organizing the 6 parts and 40 chapters of the handbook
into a coherent whole, for overseeing the collation of materials associated with
the chapters, and for being the liaison with Palgrave Macmillan when prepar-
ing and delivering the final manuscript. Without Verona’s indefatigable work,
the handbook would not exist.
We also want to acknowledge institutional and infrastructural support for
work on the handbook. It is no coincidence that all section editors have been
officers, and the two senior editors have been chairs, of the Research Com-
mittee on Political Elites (RC02) of the International Political Science Asso-
ciation (IPSA). It was at the IPSA World Congress in Madrid in 2012 that the
committee agreed that creating a handbook should be one of its principal
undertakings. During subsequent years, the committee provided and

v
vi Acknowledgments

supported the networks for the collaborative effort, and its panels and work-
shops served as meeting points for face-to-face communications between
handbook contributors and editors.
The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites honors the memory of Professor
Mattei Dogan, who created the committee in 1972 as an international and
interdisciplinary platform for researchers studying political elites and who
served as its leader until 2001 when age and health required him to turn the
committee’s leadership over to the next generation of political elite scholars.
We thank Jena University and the Cologne branch of the Gesellschaft
Sozialwissenschaftlicher Infrastruktureinrichtungen (GESIS) for hosting two
meetings of the handbook’s board of editors, and John Higley thanks the
University of Texas at Austin for faculty travel grants that enabled him to
attend those meetings, as well as an editorial meeting hosted by Maurizio
Cotta and family at their home in Robella, Italy. Finally, we thank Palgrave
Macmillan for taking on the task of publishing the handbook. Palgrave
Macmillan staff members, especially Imogen Gordon-Clark in London and
Dhanalakshmi Jayavel in Chennai, have been extremely supportive and coop-
erative in bringing the project to fruition.

Jena, Germany Heinrich Best

Austin, Texas John Higley
 Contents

1 The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites: Introduction 1

Heinrich Best and John Higley

Section I Theories of Political Elites 7

Jan Pakulski

2 The Development of Elite Theory 9

Jan Pakulski

3 Classical Elite Theory: Pareto and Weber 17

Jan Pakulski

4 Continuities and Discontinuities in Elite Theory 25

John Higley

5 Political Elites and Democracy 41

András K €or€ose nyi

6 Theory-Based Typologies of Political Elites 53

Ursula Hoffmann-Lange

vii
viii Contents

Section II Research Methods for Studying Elites 69

Elena Semenova

7 Research Methods for Studying Elites 71

Elena Semenova

8 Methods of Elite Identification 79

Ursula Hoffmann-Lange

9 Surveying and Observing Political Elites 93

Juan Rodríguez-Teruel and Jean-Pascal Daloz

10 Temporal Methods in Political Elite Studies 115

Sebastian J€
ackle and Matthew Kerby

11 Analyses of Elite Networks 135

Franziska Barbara Keller

Section III Political Elite Patterns in the World’s Main Regions 153
John Higley

12 Patterns of Political Elites 155

John Higley

13 Pre-modern Power Elites: Princes, Courts, Intermediaries 161

Jeroen Duindam

14 Political Elites in the Middle East and North Africa 181

Clement M. Henry

15 Political Elites in South Asia 203

Philip Oldenburg

16 Political Elites in Southeast Asia 225

William Case
 Contents ix

17 Political Elites in Sub-Saharan Africa 241

Jean-Pascal Daloz

18 Political Elites in Latin America 255

Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser

19 The Political Elite in Post-Soviet Russia 273

Peter Rutland

20 The Political Elite in China: A Dynamic Balance Between

Integration and Differentiation 295
Cheng Li

21 Political Elites in the West 315

John Higley

Section IV Differentiation and Integration of Elite Sectors 329

Heinrich Best

22 Elite Sectors: Differentiation and Integration 331

Heinrich Best

23 Representative Elites 339

Heinrich Best and Lars Vogel

24 Executive Elites 363

Luca Verzichelli

25 Non-elected Political Elites in the EU 381

Niilo Kauppi and Mikael Rask Madsen

26 Economic Elites 399

Michael Hartmann
x Contents

27 Media Elites 417

Eva Mayerh€offer and Barbara Pfetsch

28 Models of Elite Integration 439

Fredrik Engelstad

Section V Elite Attributes and Resources 459

Jean-Pascal Daloz and Ursula Hoffmann-Lange

29 Elite Attributes and Resources 461

Jean-Pascal Daloz and Ursula Hoffmann-Lange

30 The Personality Attributes of Political Elites 467

Gian Vittorio Caprara and Jo Silvester

31 Political and Social Backgrounds of Political Elites 489

Daniel Gaxie

32 Political Elites and Symbolic Superiority 507

Jean-Pascal Daloz

33 Norms and Orientations of Political Elites 523

Bernhard Weßels

34 Power Networks 539

David Knoke

Section VI Elite Dynamics and Dilemmas 563

Maurizio Cotta

35 Elite Dynamics and Dilemmas 565

Maurizio Cotta
 Contents xi

36 Elite Circulation and Stability 573

Luca Verzichelli

37 Democratization: The Role of Elites 593

Philippe C. Schmitter

38 Sub-national Political Elites 611

Filippo Tronconi

39 Elites or Leadership? Opposite or Complementary Paradigms? 625

Jean Blondel

40 Political Elites Beyond the Nation State 643

Maurizio Cotta

Index 661
 Contributors

Heinrich Best is Senior Professor of Sociology at Friedrich Schiller University in

Jena, Germany. Since 2012, he has chaired the International Political Science Asso-
ciation’s Research Committee on Political Elites. His most recent books include The
Europe of Elites: A Study into the Europeanness of Europe’s Political and Economic Elites
(2012), co-edited with Gy€orgy Lengyel and Luca Verzichelli; Parliamentary Elites in
Central and Eastern Europe: Recruitment and Representation, co-edited with Elena
Semenova and Michael Edinger; and Political Elites in the Transatlantic Crisis
(2014), co-edited with John Higley.
Jean Blondel is Emeritus Professor of the European University Institute and is one of
the founders of the European Consortium for Political Research. He is the author of
numerous books and articles on leadership, cabinets, presidentialism, and recently of
The Presidential Republic (2015).
Gian Vittorio Caprara is Professor of Personality Psychology at Sapienza University
of Rome, Italy. His primary research interests focus on personality psychology, social
psychology, and political psychology, with a particular emphasis on personality
development and assessment, psychosocial adjustment, and personality and politics.
He has written widely on all these topics.
William Case is Professor and Head in the Department of Politics, History, and
International Relations at the University of Nottingham’s Malaysia Campus and
former Director of the Southeast Asia Research Centre (SEARC) at City University
of Hong Kong. He is the editor of the Routledge Handbook of Southeast Asian
Democratization (2015) and author of Populist Scope and Democracy’s Fate in Southeast
Asia: Thailand, the Philippines, and Indonesia (2017).

xiii
xiv Contributors

Maurizio Cotta is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for the
Study of Political Change at the University of Siena; he is particularly interested in the
configuration of political elites in a supranational setting. He has coordinated two
European projects (IntUne and EUENGAGE) devoted to the analysis of elite-mass
relationships in the European Union.
Jean-Pascal Daloz is CNRS Research Professor at the new SAGE center, University
of Strasbourg, France, and President of the Research Committee on Comparative
Sociology of the International Sociological Association. His research, on which he has
written extensively, mainly focuses on the comparative analysis of elite distinction and
on the symbolic dimensions of political representation.
Jeroen Duindam is Professor at Leiden University, where he holds the Chair for
modern history and teaches early modern European and global comparative history.
The core of his research is on the comparative study of rulers and elites with a recent
focus on the Ottoman Empire, Late Imperial China, and Africa.
Frederik Engelstad is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo and
was Director of the Institute for Social Research, 1986–2007. His research interests
are within the fields of organizational studies, elites, power and democracy, and
sociology of culture.
Daniel Gaxie is Emeritus Professor at Paris 1 University (Pantheon-Sorbonne) and a
member of the European Center for Sociology and Political Science. He is a political
sociologist, particularly known for his work on the sociology of voting, and has
recently edited Perceptions of Europe: A Comparative Sociology of European Attitudes
(2013).
Michael Hartmann was Professor of Sociology at the Technical University of Darm-
stadt, Germany, until his retirement. His main areas of research are elites, globaliza-
tion and national management cultures, and the international comparison of systems
of higher education.
Clement M. Henry is Emeritus Professor of Government and Middle East Studies at
the University of Texas at Austin. Co-author of Globalization and the Politics of
Development in the Middle East (2010), he is author or co-editor of 12 books about
the Middle East, North Africa, oil, and Islamic finance.
John Higley is Emeritus Professor of Government and Sociology at the University of
Texas at Austin. Between 2001 and 2012, he chaired the International Political
Science Association’s Research Committee on Political Elites. Among his many
publications are Elite Foundations of Liberal Democracy (2006) with Michael Burton,
and Elitism (1980/2013) with G. Lowell Field. His most recent book is The Endan-
gered West: Myopic Elites and Fragile Social Orders in a Threatening World (2016).
Ursula Hoffmann-Lange is Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University
of Bamberg, Germany. She was previously Study Director at the Center for Survey
 Contributors xv

Research, Methods and Analysis (ZUMA, now GESIS) in Mannheim, and Research
Director for Youth and Politics at the German Youth Institute in Munich. Her
research focus is on elites, democratization, and political culture.
Sebastian J€a ckle is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of
Freiburg. In his research, he focuses on political elites in Germany, appearance effects
in elections, and attitudes in transnational comparison. He predominantly works with
quantitative methods like event history analysis, multi-level analysis, sequence analy-
sis, and network analysis.
Cristóbal Rovira Kaltwasser is Associate Professor of Political Science at Diego
Portales University in Santiago de Chile. He is co-editor of Populism in Europe and
the Americas: Threat or Corrective for Democracy? (2013) and is co-author of Populism:
A Very Short Introduction (2017).
Niilo Kauppi is Academy of Finland Distinguished Professor at the University of
Jyv€askyl€a, Finland (2015–2019) and Research Director at CNRS. A senior editor of
the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics, he is currently working on higher
education reforms and knowledge governance.
Franziska Barbara Keller is Assistant Professor at the Social Science Division of
Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. She currently studies the role of
elite networks in political purges in China and the Soviet Union, the effect of ties
formed in the Chinese Communist Party School on promotions, and how informal
networks connect citizens to the government in Kazakhstan.
Matthew Kerby is Senior Lecturer in the School of Politics and International
Relations at the Australian National University. He is a founding member of the
Selection and Deselection of Political Elites (SEDEPE) network and co-convener of
the European Consortium for Political Research Standing Group on Elites and
Political Leadership. His main research is on comparative political executives and
elites.
David Knoke is Professor of Sociology at the University of Minnesota. His research
investigates diverse social networks, including intra- and inter-organizational, political,
economic, health care, financial, terrorist, and counterterror networks.
András K€ or€osenyi holds the Research Chair at the Institute for Political Science,
Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, and is Professor of
Political Science at Corvinus University of Budapest. His current research interests
include political leadership, theory of democracy, and Hungarian politics.
Cheng Li is Director and Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s John
L. Thornton China Center. He is author of Chinese Politics in the Xi Jinping Era:
Reassessing Collective Leadership (2016) and The Power of Ideas: The Rising Influence of
Thinkers and Think Tanks in China (2017).
xvi Contributors

Mikael Rask Madsen is Professor of European Law and Integration, and Director of
iCourts, the Danish National Research Foundation’s Centre of Excellence for Inter-
national Courts, University of Copenhagen. His main area of research is focused on
globalization and the role of legal institutions and professionals in these processes.
Eva Mayerh€ offer holds a PhD from the Free University of Berlin, Department of
Political and Social Sciences. Her research deals with the intersection of political
sociology and communication studies, with special emphasis on comparative and
attitudinal research.
Philip Oldenburg is a Research Scholar in the South Asia Institute, Columbia
University. His published scholarly work focuses mainly on Indian politics, particu-
larly local government and elections. He has been editor or co-editor of several
volumes in the Asia Society’s India Briefing series.
Jan Pakulski is Professor Emeritus at the University of Tasmania, Australia; Affiliate
of the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality, Stanford University, USA; and
Professor at Collegium Civitas, Warsaw, Poland. His main research interests, on
which he has written widely, are political elites, democratization, post-communism,
social movements, and social inequality.
Barbara Pfetsch is Professor of Communication Theory and Media Effects Research
at the Department of Media and Communication at the Free University of Berlin,
Germany. Her research focuses on comparative analyses of political communication
systems and cultures, (online) media debates and agenda building, and the emergence
of European public spheres.
Peter Rutland is Professor of Government at Wesleyan University. Since 2013, he
has been editor-in-chief of Nationalities Papers and, since 2011, associate editor of
Russian Review. Recent articles cover topics such as oil and national identity and
neo-liberalism during the Russian transition.
Philippe C. Schmitter is Emeritus Professor at the Department of Political and
Social Sciences at the European University Institute, Fiesole, Italy. He has written
on comparative politics, regional integration in Western Europe and Latin America,
the transition from authoritarian rule in Southern Europe and Latin America, and on
the intermediation of class, sectoral and professional interests.
Elena Semenova is Assistant Professor in the Institute of Political Science at the Free
University of Berlin. Her research interests, on which she has written widely, are
comparative legislative and cabinet studies, party politics, and political psychology.
Jo Silvester is Professor of Psychology and Deputy Dean at Cass Business School,
City University of London, and specializes on leadership assessment and development.
She has worked with major political parties to create a competency-based selection
process for prospective parliamentary candidates and with business in the field of
leader emergence and diversity.
 Contributors xvii

Juan Rodríguez Teruel is Associate Professor at the Universitat de València and was
awarded the Juan Linz CEPC Prize and AECPA Prize for the best PhD dissertation in
2007. His main research focus is on Spanish political elites and party politics.
Filippo Tronconi is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of
Bologna, Italy. His main research focus is on the territorial aspects of political
competition, political parties, and legislative behavior.
Luca Verzichelli is Professor of Political Science at the University of Siena. He has
written extensively in the fields of European political elites and institutions. Among
his recent works is The Europe of Elites, edited with Heinrich Best and Gy€orgy
Lengyel.
Lars Vogel is postdoctoral researcher at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. His
research interests include political elites and representative democracies, European
integration, and populism.
Bernhard Weßels is Senior Researcher at the WZB Social Science Center, Berlin,
and Professor of Political Science at the Humboldt University, Berlin. His main fields
of research interests are comparative political behavior, political representation, and
interest intermediation.
 List of Figures

Fig. 10.1 Complete sequences of FCC judges—transversal frequency plot

and mean time in each state 124
Fig. 11.1 Job positions in the Chinese political system. Source of data: Shih
et al. (2012), Keller (2016b) 143
Fig. 11.2 Chinese Central Committee members in 2007. The position of all
nodes is determined by the layout algorithm force atlas implemented
in Gephi (Bastian et al. 2009). Disconnected nodes are placed to save
space. Data source: Shih et al. (2012), Keller (2016a, 2015) 146
Fig. 14.1 Duration and penetration of colonial presences in MENA 185
Fig. 14.2 Trust in the political elite, 2007–2013 197
Fig. 20.1 Turnover rate of the CCP Central Committee (1982–2017). Note
and source: The turnover rate of the Central Committee also
includes alternate members in the previous Central Committee who
are promoted to full members (Li and White 2003). The data on
the 17th and 18th Central Committees were derived from the
author’s database. For the estimated turnover rate of the 19th
Central Committee, see Cheng Li (2016) 298
Fig. 20.2 Technocrat representation in ministerial/provincial leadership posts
(1982–2013). Source and notes: The data for the years 1982, 1987,
and 1997 are based on Lee (1991), Lieberthal (1995) and Cheng Li
and Lynn White (1998). The data for 2008 and 2013 were
primarily compiled by the author using Xinhua News Agency and
Chinese-language searches provided by Google, Baidu, and Yahoo 300
Fig. 23.1 Basic social configuration in which representative elites are
embedded (Source: Vogel (2016)) 342

xix
xx List of Figures

Fig. 23.2 Share of elected women in national parliaments (percentage; 1990,

1997–2016) (Interparliamentary Union. The regional aggregation
is provided by the World Bank http://data.worldbank.org/
indicator/SG.GEN.PARL.ZS) 350
Fig. 34.1 Graph of 1990 Mexican national power elite network 553
 List of Tables

Table 6.1 Elite typology based on the extent of differentiation and unity 59
Table 6.2 Elite typology based on patterns of circulation and extent of unity
during and after democratic transitions 60
Table 6.3 Dahrendorf’s elite typology 62
Table 6.4 Ruostetsaari’s elite typology 62
Table 6.5 Hoffmann-Lange’s elite typology 63
Table 8.1 A comparison of the positional, decisional and reputational
methods of elite identification 87
Table 9.1 Major cross-country elite surveys 97
Table 9.2 Main advantages and disadvantages of different survey modes 103
Table 20.1 Representation of provincial chiefs in the Politburo
(1987–2012) 310
Table 26.1 Inter- and transnationality of CEOs of the 1000 largest
companies worldwide in 2015 410
Table 28.1 Models of elite interaction 442
Table 34.1 Blockmodel analysis of 1990 Mexican national power network 554
Table 34.2 Core/periphery analysis of 1990 Mexican national power
network 555
Table 34.3 Optimal modularity analysis of 1990 Mexican national power
network 556

xxi
 1
The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites:
Introduction
Heinrich Best and John Higley

In view of a hundred-year-long discussion of political elites and the cascade of

references to them today in academic and public discussion, it is astounding
that investigations of political elites have not previously been incorporated and
assessed in a handbook. The strong positive and negative value connotations
that attach to political elites and the central roles these connotations have
in the language of contemporary political combat are additional incentives
to take stock of facts and theories about political elites. This handbook
summarizes both common ground and contested issues in the literature on
political elites.
When Robert Putnam published his Comparative Study of Political Elites
40 years ago (Putnam 1976), that literature was already large. Putnam
surveyed some 600 books, articles, and documents that had appeared in
English since Gaetano Mosca, Vilfredo Pareto, and Robert Michels
published pioneering works about political elites early in the twentieth
century. In cogent chapters, Putnam distilled the extant literature’s main
topics and gave a good sense of its breadth: the inevitability of political elites,
interactions between them and wider social structures, processes of political

H. Best (*)
Friedrich-Schiller-University, Jena, Germany
J. Higley
University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

© The Author(s) 2018 1

H. Best, J. Higley (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-51904-7_1
2 H. Best and J. Higley

elite recruitment, sources of elite motives and beliefs, different structures of

political elites, elite-mass linkages, and how political elites are gradually or
suddenly transformed.
At the time of Putnam’s book, scholars studying political elites were
embroiled in arguments with Marxists about which conceptual approach to
politics, an elite-centered or a class-centered one, had greater explanatory
value. Neo-Marxism was in vogue, and scholars who focused on elites during
the 1970s remember the brickbats hurled regularly at them by neo-Marxists.
The chasm between the two approaches seemed no less deep than when
Mosca, Pareto, and Michels first posed the study of elites as an alternative
and antidote to Marxism. During the 1970s, moreover, the chasm was a
scholarly manifestation of the global conflict between liberal capitalism and
state socialism. Amid oil shocks and economic stagflation; authoritarian rule in
much of the world; upheavals in Iran, China, and Poland; as well as terrorist
actions by “revolutionary” groups such as the Brigate Rosse, Red Army Faction,
and Weather Underground, the 1970s were a decade of tumult and uncer-
tainty. It was by no means clear how the scholarly conflict between elite-
centered and class-centered approaches would play out. Although Putnam’s
benchmark book did much to move the study of political elites toward the
scholarly mainstream, it remained a relatively specialized undertaking and, in
neo-Marxist eyes, a blinkered one.
During the four decades since Putnam’s book appeared, world political
configurations and scholarly discourse have been turned upside down, so that
political elite studies, not class analyses, are now in vogue. This change has
been associated with three global developments. One was the third wave of
democratization, which began to flow almost exactly when Putnam’s book
went to press. Although the third wave spawned a vast and conflicted research
literature, political elites and their roles in democratic transitions and consol-
idations were at its center. Indeed, much of the debate about democratization
boiled down to whether the third wave was driven mainly by elites or by mass
yearnings for democracy (Huntington 1991; Higley and Gunther 1992;
Diamond 1999; Collier 2000).
The inability of political elites in state socialist countries to reform their
economic and political systems and avoid system collapse was a second, closely
related development. Failures of state socialist elites to enact system-saving
reforms and intricate elite negotiations to spawn fledgling democratic regimes
did much to bring studies of political elites to the fore (Kotz and Weir 1997;
Mawdsley and White 2000). The global financial crisis that began in 2008 and
its protracted economic and political consequences have been the third main
development. The extent to which actions and inactions by political and
 1 The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites: Introduction 3

business elites caused the crisis and made recovery from it so halting have been
key issues (e.g. Blinder 2013; Wolf 2014; Best and Higley 2014). The rise of
nationalist-populist elites mobilizing crisis-rooted discontents among wide
swaths of voters is another important issue.
As a consequence of these developments (and, of course, others), books and
articles about political elites pour forth, and references to them are ubiquitous
in scholarly and public discourse. Today, a Putnam-like survey of relevant
literature would have to be several magnitudes larger than his was four decades
ago. There is barely a political elite in the world that has not by now been the
subject of at least one study, and political elites in most countries have been
studied multiple times from numerous angles. Causal connections between
political elites and a wide variety of social and political phenomena are now
routinely asserted.

Directions in Political Elite Studies

On the axiomatic basis of the early elite theorists’ postulate about the inevi-
tability of political elites and the overwhelming body of historical and empir-
ical evidence that supports the postulate, political elites must be viewed as a
universal feature of all at least moderately developed societies. Following
fundamental shakeups of political and social orders, political elites inevitably
form anew, and in processes of renewal or transformation, they display an
enormous variety of structural manifestations and adaptations to societal
changes. The specific characteristics of political elites are related systematically
to their performance and of societies over which they preside.
Political elites are defined in this handbook as individuals and small, rela-
tively cohesive, and stable groups with disproportionate power to affect national
and supranational political outcomes on a continuing basis. They consist of
several thousand persons in all but the tiniest of modern societies. Political
elite members hold top positions in large or otherwise pivotal organizations,
institutions, and social movements, and they participate in or directly influ-
ence political decision-making. Political elites include the familiar “power
elite” triumvirate of top business, government executive, and military leaders
(Mills 1956) along with persons and groups holding strategic positions in
political parties and parliaments, major interest organizations and professional
associations, important media enterprises and trade unions, and religious and
other hierarchically structured institutions powerful enough to affect political
decisions.
4 H. Best and J. Higley

This definition of political elites, or one very close to it, is now standard in
the literature, although scholars use different methods to identify “proximate
decision makers,” as Putnam termed them (1976, p. 11). Some scholars and
observers have much larger aggregations of influential persons and groups in
mind when they refer to elites (e.g. Collier 2000, pp. 17–19; Murray 2012,
pp. 17–20), but in most studies, political elites at national and supranational
decision-making levels are treated as numbering only a few thousand persons.
For example, a series of systematic studies of the US political elite since
Putnam’s book appeared have identified about 6000 individuals holding
roughly 7000 top positions in institutions and organizations that together
control more than half of America’s total resources (Dye 1976–2014; see also
Lindsay 2014). To give another example, the polycentric political elite presid-
ing over the European Union and Euro Zone is estimated to consist of
600–650 persons, many of whom simultaneously hold top decision-making
positions in their home countries (Cotta 2014).
Analyzing the backgrounds and demographic profiles of political elite
members—their family and class origins, ages and genders, educations and
careers as well as their religious, ethnic, regional, and other affiliations—long
constituted the dominant approach to studying political elites. This was in no
small part because public biographical and other documentary sources were
readily available for analysis. During the past 40 years, however, scholars have
availed themselves of computers, statistical techniques, and many advances in
communications to undertake survey studies of political elite attitudes, inter-
personal networks, and participation in decision-making. These surveys have
largely displaced the earlier analysis of elite members’ biographies. Research on
political elites has become much more multidimensional and focused on what
elites do than on where they come from (Higley 2016). Consider, for example,
the several comparative surveys of political elites in European countries that
have been conducted in recent years (Best et al. 2012).
Recent studies cast doubt on the accuracy and utility of earlier models of
political elite structure and behavior, which derived mainly from analyses
of elite biographies. The debate between adherents of pluralist, power
elite, and ruling class models generated much heat during the 1960s and
1970s, but that debate has cooled, because the rich data stemming from survey
studies show that elite structures and behaviors are more complex and multi-
faceted than earlier models depicted. However, there is as yet no clear replace-
ment for earlier models. Contemporary theorists of political elites do not agree
about elite structures and behavioral dynamics and how they vary from one
country to another or from one historical period to another in a particular
society.
 1 The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites: Introduction 5

This is to say that theorizing has not kept pace with the collection of more
diversified and rich empirical data about political elites. There is no general
and accepted theory that drives studies today, and its absence is a main
challenge. There is, for example, no widely accepted typology of political elites
that would inform a theory positing causal relations between changes in elite
types and changes in political regimes or in institutional effectiveness. These
and other unresolved issues are refrains in this handbook.

The Handbook’s Structure

In early 2015, the Research Committee on Political Elites of the International
Political Science Association invited several dozen specialists on political elites
to contribute chapters summarizing and assessing recent conceptual and
empirical advances in their areas of expertise. Organized in six sections, the
handbook’s 40 chapters contributed by these scholars illustrate the field’s
diversity and richness, its achievements, and its shortcomings. Chapters
build on studies of political elites that have accumulated, showing how they
illuminate a wide range of political phenomena. The handbook has been
co-edited by a half dozen prominent analysts of political elites who have played
leading roles in the Research Committee. It would be wrong, however, to
regard the handbook as summarizing studies conducted or sponsored by the
Committee. The volume contains a much wider array of scholarship about
political elites that will, we hope, stand as a lasting contribution to this
important area of social science.
The handbook opens with a section devoted to old and new theories
concerning political elites, with its chapters highlighting both continuity and
innovation. The handbook’s second section describes and discusses method-
ological techniques and instruments devised for identifying and studying
political elites. Its third section canvasses patterns of traditional political elites
and those today in the world’s major regions: sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle
East and North Africa, Latin America, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and the
West, with special chapters on Chinese and post-Soviet Russian political elites.
The fourth section discusses attributes of political elites in the main sectors and
institutional settings of modern societies—the executive, parliament, the
economy, media, for example—and how these fundamentally differentiated
elite groups relate to each other. The penultimate fifth section explores
characteristics and resources of political elites vis-à-vis mass populations,
while the sixth and final section dissects challenges that political elites confront
today. Each section begins with an introduction by its editor(s) that gives an
overview of themes elaborated in the section chapters. With an extensive
6 H. Best and J. Higley

bibliography, the handbook provides readers with a comprehensive stocktak-

ing of what is known about political elites and their consequences for politics
and society.
It is important to emphasize, in conclusion, that the statuses and situations
of political elites are always precarious and subject to internal conflicts and
external pressures that threaten elite persistence. The ways in which elites cope
or fail to cope with this precariousness are kaleidoscopic. The handbook seeks
to cover their main dimensions and manifestations.

References
Best, H., & Higley, J. (Eds.). (2014). Political Elites in the Transatlantic Crisis.
London: Palgrave.
Best, H., Lengyel, G., & Verzichelli, L. (Eds.). (2012). The Europe of Elites. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Blinder, A. (2013). After the Music Stopped. The Financial Crisis, the Response, and the
Work Ahead. New York: Penguin.
Collier, R. (2000). Paths Toward Democracy: The Working Class and Elites in Western
Europe and South America. New York: Cambridge.
Cotta, M. (2014). Facing the Crisis: The European Elite System’s Changing Geom-
etry. In H. Best & J. Higley (Eds.), Political Elites in the Transatlantic Crisis
(pp. 58–80). London: Palgrave.
Diamond, L. (1999). Developing Democracy. Toward Consolidation. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press.
Dye, T. R. (2014). Who’s Running America? The Obama Reign. Boulder: Paradigm.
Higley, J. (2016). The Endangered West. Myopic Elites and Fragile Social Orders in a
Threatening World. New York: Routledge.
Higley, J., & Gunther, R. (Eds.). (1992). Elites and Democratic Consolidation in Latin
America and Southern Europe. New York: Cambridge.
Huntington, S. P. (1991). The Third Wave. Democratization in the Late Twentieth
Century. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.
Kotz, D., & Weir, F. (1997). Revolution from Above, The Demise of the Soviet System.
London: Routledge.
Lindsay, M. (2014). View from the Top. New York: Wiley.
Mawdsley, E., & White, S. (2000). The Soviet Elite from Lenin to Gorbachev. Oxford:
Oxford University Press.
Mills, C. W. (1956). The Power Elite. New York: Oxford.
Murray, C. (2012). Coming Apart. The State of White America, 1960–2010.
New York: Crown Forum.
Putnam, R. D. (1976). The Comparative Study of Political Elites. Englewood Cliffs:
Prentice-Hall.
Wolf, M. (2014). The Shifts and the Shocks. New York: Penguin.
 Section I
Theories of Political Elites
Jan Pakulski
 2
The Development of Elite Theory
Jan Pakulski

The body of thought known as elite theory has deep historical roots.1 Embed-
ded in the intellectual legacies of Niccolò Machiavelli and Thomas Hobbes,
first systematic formulations of the theory were produced by a critical and
skeptical generation of European liberals—principally Vilfredo Pareto,
Gaetano Mosca, Robert Michels, Max Weber, Joseph Schumpeter, and Jos
e
Ortega y Gasset—all of whom wrote between the 1890s and 1940s. The
theory’s trademarks are a focus on elites as principal political and social actors,
a conceptual pairing of elites and non-elites, and, most important, a political
and methodological realism combined with an anti-utopian view of what is not
possible politically and socially in all organized (at least somewhat developed)
societies.
In all such societies, a bureaucratization of power facilitates domination by
political elites that consist of top politicians, heads of state agencies, business
tycoons and managers, leaders of organized labor, media moguls, and leaders
of consequential mass movements. These networks of powerful individuals
and tiny groups control the major decisional centers in modern societies. Elites
mobilize the populations over which they preside for various causes and
measures. Effective governance depends upon talented and skilled leaders
imbued with political will, confidence, and foresight. Elite theory concentrates
on the extent to which elites are endowed with these qualities and on

J. Pakulski (*)
University of Tasmania, Hobart, TAS, Australia

© The Author(s) 2018 9

H. Best, J. Higley (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites,
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-51904-7_2
10 J. Pakulski

shortcomings that produce political decay and lead to replacements by new

elites better endowed with such qualities. In these and other respects, elite
theory staunchly opposes Marxist and other strands of radical political and
social thought.
The early exponents of elite theory attacked the promised advent of egali-
tarian and fully democratic societies as an illusion and an ideological pipe
dream. They extended this attack to ideal renditions of Enlightenment beliefs,
portraying them as illusions, myths, and deceptions. The development of
modern societies, the early elite theorists argued, hardly bore out beliefs
about linear progress and the triumph of reason. Instead, periods of relative
order and stability are followed, more or less inexorably, by periods of disorder
and conflict, and the rule of reason is at most fragile and patchy. Especially in
an era of mass politics, political behavior is driven mainly by the hopes and
fears of populations that lend themselves to manipulations by demagogues.
Social hierarchy is a strong barrier to egalitarian reforms and leveling revolu-
tions, while democracy in its representative form works primarily to sustain
competitive governing elites. However, such elite democracies are fragile and
unstable. Cunning and vulpine political leaders allied with business speculators
gradually dissipate authority and exhaust a society’s wealth. This leads to a
crisis in which more resolute and authoritarian leonine elites take over. They
also decay—lose their ruling capacities—thus triggering crises and causing
their own downfall. Such cycles of elite ascendancy and decay are observed in
all known large-scale societies.
The early elite theorists had as their targets Marxist-socialist visions of a
wholly egalitarian society and radical visions of a pure (direct) democracy.
They held these visions to be delusions that were both deceptive and danger-
ous. Because there is no recorded case in history of a wholly egalitarian society,
Marxist visions are deceptive. Because they erode the legitimacy of a liberal
political and social order, visions of pure elite-less democracy are dangerous.
The pursuit of a classless society or a pure democracy is therefore both futile
and risky. Moreover, the early theorists added, utopian egalitarian and dem-
ocratic visions pose formidable obstacles to the development of an objective
and realistic social science. Yet such a social science, grounded in historical-
empirical evidence, is the foundation on which a workable politics must be
built.
This critical diagnosis was the basis for elite theory’s tenets about the cyclical
degeneration and regeneration of elites (Pareto and Mosca) and the charis-
matic mobilization of mass populations (Weber), as Jan Pakulski points out in
Chap. 3. They also form a background for a democratic method for selecting
and constraining state leaders and elites through competitive elections
 2 The Development of Elite Theory 11

(Schumpeter). Concentrations of power and elite rule are not only constant
and ubiquitous in history; they are all the more conspicuous in conditions of
omnipresent bureaucratic organization, regulatory states, and mass media used
as a tool for shaping public opinion. Yet in some circumstances the existence of
elites can be compatible with important degrees of individual freedom and
dignity secured through legal-rational authority (Weber) or through a system
of “juridical defense” (Mosca).
These and other tenets of elite theory have been subjects of theoretical
debates canvassed by John Higley in Chap. 4 and Andras K€or€os
enyi in
Chap. 5. Although the early elite theorists, especially Pareto, denounced
democracy as fraudulent “poppycock,”2 Weber and Schumpeter worked to
effect a theoretical reconciliation between the existence of elites and
democracy’s practical workings. They stressed that democracy never amounts
to “people’s power” in a literal sense. Nevertheless, as a regime type involving
open and regular electoral competitions for leadership, democracy dignifies
voters by rendering them “king-makers” (“authorizers” of leaders) and occa-
sional deposers of incompetent “kings.” And although such democracy cannot
ensure political and social equality in other than a legal sense, it can in
auspicious circumstances produce the stable political order that is a precondi-
tion of individual freedom and dignity.
But while these outcomes are possible, they are by no means certain—an
important point at the beginning of the twentieth century. The early theorists
agreed that neither elite nor mass conditions in Europe during the decades
surrounding World War I were conducive to stable political orders. They
instead anticipated, in Weber’s striking phrase, a “polar night of icy darkness
and severity.” This would entail plebiscitary rule and “Caesarist” mobilizations
of mass publics, the collapse of vulpine elites and their replacement by leonine
ones, the decline of judicially protected liberties, the perpetuation of oligarchy,
and rule by mediocre populist demagogues.
The elite theorists were proven right, but their predictive success did not
translate into an acceptance of elite theory. During the “Age of Extremes,” as
historian Eric Hobsbawm (1994) labeled the “short twentieth century”
between 1914 and 1991, utopian visions were ascendant. Marxist class ana-
lyses and conceptions of participatory democracy offered more alluring visions
and dominated political and intellectual discourse. Both of these utopian
streams of thought propagated hostile and distorted renditions of elite theory.
Marxists portrayed elite theorists as bourgeois ideologues and reactionary
cynics whose thesis about the inevitability of elites was nothing more than
an apology for the unsavory status quo. Enthusiasts of participatory democracy
painted elite theory as anti-democratic and authoritarian in thrust. These
Another random document with
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lead encephalitis. Bromides and iodides should be given, and the
patient placed in quiet surroundings, and fed on light, nutritious diet,
and every attempt made to produce elimination of the poison.
In the acute attacks vaso-motor spasm is no doubt partially
accountable for the symptoms, and various dilators, previously noted
in discussing colic, may be made use of, such, for instance, as amyl
nitrite, scopolamine, etc., whilst pyramidon, antipyrin, phenacetin,
and other similar drugs may be given between the attacks. Under no
circumstances should any person who has suffered from
encephalitis or other cerebral symptom of lead poisoning be allowed
to resume work in a lead industry.
The treatment of eye affections in lead poisoning requires little
comment, as the essential treatment must be the same as in other
cases, mainly devoted towards the elimination of the poison.
Attempts may be made to treat paresis of the ocular muscles by
means of mild electric currents, but of this we have had no
experience. About 50 per cent. of cases of lead amaurosis and
amblyopia recover, but a number progress to total and permanent
blindness, and prognosis in such cases must always be guarded.
Prognosis.—The prognosis of the first attacks of lead poisoning
of simple colic or even slight unilateral paresis is good; practically all
cases recover under proper treatment. It is unusual for a person to
succumb to a first attack of simple colic, or paresis.
In most cases the serious forms of poisoning only make their
appearance after three or four previous attacks of colic, but a single
attack of paresis is much more frequently followed by a severe form
of poisoning, such as encephalitis.
A limited number of persons are highly susceptible to lead
poisoning, and these persons rapidly show their susceptibility when
working in a dangerous lead process. Lead poisoning occurring in an
alcoholic subject is more likely to result in paretic and mental
symptoms than in a person who is not addicted to alcohol, and the
prognosis of lead poisoning in an alcoholic is much less favourable
than in the case of a normal person.
Mental symptoms very rarely follow from a single attack of lead
colic, and as a rule do not become established under three or four
attacks at least.
 A small number of persons exposed to excessive doses of lead
absorption through the lungs develop mental symptoms, such as
acute encephalitis, without any prodromal stage. The prognosis in
such cases is always exceedingly grave.
Sudden generalized forms of paralysis are not common in the
early stages, but are invariably of grave import. A few cases of
paresis, particularly those of the peroneal type, and affecting the
lower limbs, become progressive, and eventually develop into a
condition resembling progressive muscular atrophy with spinal cord
degeneration.
The prognosis of simple colic in women is about as good as for
males, but if an attack of abortion is associated with lead poisoning,
eclampsia often supervenes and permanent mental derangement
may follow. In the dementia associated with lead poisoning the
prognosis is not so grave as in other forms of dementia, especially
alcoholic, but depression is an unfavourable symptom. The mania of
lead poisoning is not so noisy as that of alcoholic mania, but where
there is suspicion of alcoholic as well as lead poisoning the
prognosis is exceedingly grave.
As a rule the prognosis of cases of lead poisoning occurring in
industrial conditions is more favourable when colic is a marked
feature than when it is absent, and there is no doubt that the
prognosis in cases of industrial lead poisoning at the present time is
more favourable than it was before the introduction of exhaust
ventilation and general medical supervision—a fact no doubt to be
explained by the relative decrease in the amount of lead absorbed.

REFERENCES.
[1] Goadby, K. W.: Journ. of Hygiene, vol. ix., 1909.
[2] Hunter, John: Observations of Diseases of the Army in Jamaica.
London, 1788.
[3] Drissole and Tanquerel: Meillère’s Le Saturnisme, p. 164.
[4] Hoffmann: Journ. de Méd., October, 1750.
[5] Weill and Duplant: Gazette des Hôpitaux, lxxix., 796, 1902.
[6] Briquet: Bull. Thérap., Août, 1857.
[7] Peyrow: Thèse de Paris, 1891.
 [8] Stevens: Bulletin of Bureau of Labour, U.S.A., No. 95, p. 138, 1911.
[9] Zinn: Berl. Klin. Woch., Nr. 50, 1899.
[10] Serafini: Le Morgagni, No. 11, 1884.
 CHAPTER XII
PREVENTIVE MEASURES AGAINST LEAD
POISONING

Amount of Lead Fume and Dust in the Atmosphere

Breathed.
—Lead fuses at 325° C. and boils at between 1450° and 1,600° C. It
is volatile when heated to a cherry-red colour—about 550° C.
Experiments[A] carried out in the laboratory of a lead smelting
works in London to determine the temperature at which leady fumes
rise from the surface of open baths of molten lead, showed that
unless pure lead is heated to about 500° C., and at the same time
stirred, no appreciable fume comes off, and that from lead, at the
same temperature, under ordinary working conditions, little or no
lead in the form of oxide passes into the air. From lead that has been
unrefined or which contains zinc—that is, lead in the earlier stages of
its manufacture (in the reverberatory furnace)—leady fume was not
given off at temperatures less than 760° C. even when stirred,
because at a temperature of 600° C. the surface of the molten metal
became covered with fluid slag, which will not allow any oxide to be
given off. Impurities such as tin or antimony prevent the oxidation of
molten lead at lower temperatures, and give it a bright, shiny colour.
When heated to about 600° C., these impurities form a slag on the
surface of the lead containing antimoniates and stannates of lead,
which do not evolve lead fumes unless heated to temperatures never
likely to be reached in open lead pots. The reason why molten
refined lead can give off lead fume more readily than those named is
because the oxide formed on the surface is a dry powder and not in
the form of slag. Hence, when the bath is stirred, some of the dry
oxide is broken up and may rise into the air. When a bath of molten
lead is not stirred at all, it can be heated to over 740° C. without
finding oxide in the air aspirated—a temperature not obtained under
ordinary working conditions.
[A] In these experiments air was aspirated through an iron funnel having an
area of 113 square inches (12 inches diameter), placed at a height of 1¹⁄₂
inches above the molten metal, and connected to an iron tube 3 feet in
length and ¹⁄₂ inch in diameter. Inside the iron tube was a glass tube, one
end reaching own to the top of the funnel and the other connected with a
tube containing pure loose asbestos wool, and continued down to a tightly
stoppered bottle holding dilute sulphuric acid. Another glass tube connected
this bottle with an aspirator. The asbestos tube was weighed before and
after each test, and the asbestos then treated with nitric acid, and the lead
determined volumetrically. In none of the tests made was lead found in the
bottle containing sulphuric acid.

Were there nothing else to consider but escape of lead fume from
a pot or bath of molten metal, obviously hooding over of the bath and
removal of the fume from the atmosphere of the workroom would be
unnecessary until this temperature was reached. Usually, however,
the bath is kept standing exposed to the air, and the oxide which
forms on the surface has to be skimmed off periodically, and
whenever the ladle is emptied a small cloud of dust arises. Or at
times, in certain processes, chemical interaction takes place in the
bath, as in the dipping of hollow-ware articles previously cleaned in
hydrochloric acid, with evolution of fume of volatile chloride of lead.
Any vessel, therefore, of molten metallic lead in which skimming is
necessary, or in which chemical action gives rise to fume, requires a
hood and exhaust shaft, even although the temperature is little, if at
all, above the melting-point—unless, indeed, a separate exhaust can
be arranged for the removal of the dust immediately above the point
where the skimmings are deposited.
Of many samples of dust collected in workrooms where there are
baths of molten lead, it is impossible to say definitely how much of
the lead present is due to fume, and how much to dust. Thus, a
person tempering the tangs of files was attacked by plumbism, and a
sample of dust collected from an electric pendent directly over the
pot, at a height of 4 feet from the ground, was found to contain 15·6
per cent. of metallic lead. Similarly, a sample taken above a bath for
tempering railway springs contained 48·1 per cent. metallic lead[1].
And, again, a sample collected from the top of the magazine of a
linotype machine contained 8·18 per cent. Such analyses point to
the necessity of enclosing, as far as possible, the sources of danger
—either the fume or the dust, or both. Determination of the melting-
point of the molten mass will often help in deciding whether there is
risk of fume from the pot, and, if there is not (as in the sample of dust
from the linotype machine referred to), will direct attention to the
sources of dust in the room. Proceeding on these lines, S. R.
Bennett[2], using a thermo-electric pyrometer which had been
previously standardized and its rate of error ascertained, and
checking the results in some cases by a mercury-in-glass
thermometer (the bulb of which was protected by metal tubing),
determined the temperature of the various pots and baths of molten
lead used in the Sheffield district. As was anticipated, temporary
cessation of work, stirring up of metal, recoking of furnaces, and
other causes, produced fluctuations of temperatures from minute to
minute in the same pot, and in its different parts. The compensated
pyrometer used gave for file-hardening pots a maximum of 850° C.,
and a minimum of 760° C., the average mean working temperature
being about 800° C. The variations of temperature of lead used for
tempering tangs of files and rasps was found to be high, and largely
unrestricted from a practical standpoint. The maximum was 735° C.,
and the minimum 520° C., the average mean working temperature
being 650° to 700° C., varying more than this within a few hours in
the same pot. Spring tempering is carried out at some comparatively
constant temperature between a maximum of nearly 600° C. and a
minimum of 410° C., depending on the kind of steel and the purpose
for which the steel is to be employed. Generally, the temperature
required rises as the percentage of carbon in the steel is diminished.
As these baths are larger than file-hardening pots, the temperature
range is higher at the bottom than at the top unless well stirred up.
Some lead pots are set in one side of a flue, and the temperature in
the mass is then greater on the furnace side. From further
observation of these pots during experiments, he was inclined to
believe that the lead did not volatilize directly into the atmosphere, as
heated water does, but that the particles of coke, fused oil, etc.,
which rise from the surface, act as carriers of the rapidly oxidized
lead particles which cling to them.
Similar experiments were carried out in letterpress printing works.
The average temperature was 370° C. in the stereo pots, and in the
linotype pots at work 303° C. Scrap lead melting-pots when hottest
registered 424° C., but registered as low as 310° C., according to the
amount of scrap added, the state of the fire underneath, etc. The
best practical working temperature depends largely on the
composition of the metal used. That at some factories is the same
for stereo drums as for lino pots—viz., 81·6 per cent. lead, 16·3 per
cent. antimony, and 2·0 per cent. tin, added to harden the lead. On
the other hand, some printers use a higher percentage of antimony
in the lino than in the stereo metal. Lead melts at 325° C., and
antimony at 630° C., but by adding antimony to lead up to 14 per
cent. the melting-point is reduced at an almost uniform rate to 247°
C., after which further addition of antimony raises the melting-point.
This explains why temperatures as low as 290° C. are practicable for
linotype pots. The molten eutectic has a specific gravity of about
10·5, whereas the cubic crystals average 6·5 only; therefore in these
pots the latter float on the top, and excess of antimony is to be
expected in the skimmings or on the surface.
Administration of certain sections of the Factory and Workshop
Act, 1901, would be simplified were there a ready means available
for determining the extent of contamination of the air—especially of
Section 1, requiring the factory to be ventilated so as to render
harmless, as far as practicable, all gases, vapours, dust, or other
impurities, generated in the course of the manufacturing process,
that may be injurious to health; of Section 74, empowering an
inspector to require a fan or other means if this will minimize
inhalation of injurious fumes or dust; of many regulations having as
their principal object removal of dust and fumes; and of Section 75,
prohibiting meals in rooms where lead or other poisonous substance
is used, so as to give rise to dust or fumes. Unfortunately, owing to
the difficulty hitherto of accurate collection, only a very few
determinations of the actual amount of lead dust and fume present in
the atmosphere breathed have been made. This lends peculiar value
to a series of investigations by G. Elmhirst Duckering, which have
thrown much light on the amount of lead fume present in the air of a
tinning workshop, and the amount of lead dust in the air during
certain pottery processes, and the process of sand-papering after
painting. Incidentally, also, they help to determine the minimal daily
dose of lead which will set up chronic lead poisoning[3]. Aspirating
the air at about the level of the worker’s mouth for varying periods of
time, he determined the amount of lead in the fume, or in the dust,
per 10 cubic metres of air, and from knowledge of the time during
which inhalation took place he calculated the approximate quantity
inhaled per worker daily. We have summarized some of his
conclusions in the table on pp. 204, 205:
Duckering’s experiments as to the presence of fumes containing
compounds of lead in the atmosphere breathed were carried out in a
workshop for the tinning of iron hollow-ware with a mixture consisting
of half lead and half tin. The process of manufacture and the main
sources of lead contamination in the air (knowledge arrived at from
these experiments) are explained on p. 59. As the result of
laboratory experiments designed to show the effect of the violent
escape of vapour produced below the surface of molten metal in
causing contamination of the air, and the nature of the contaminating
substances, he was able to conclude that the chemical action of the
materials (acid and flux) used, and subsequent vaporization of the
products of this action, was a much more important factor than the
mechanical action of escaping vapour. Subsequently, experiments
carried out on factory premises gave the results which are expressed
in the table as to the relative danger, from lead, to (a) a tinner using
an open bath; (b) a tinner working at a bath provided with a hood
and exhaust by means of a furnace flue; and (c) the nature and
extent of air contamination caused by the operation of wiping excess
of metal (while still in a molten state) from the tinned article. In all
three experiments aspiration of air was made slowly: it was
maintained at the rate of 3 to 4 cubic feet an hour in the first
experiment for between seven and eight hours; in the second for
twenty-eight to twenty-nine hours; and in the third for twenty-four to
twenty-five hours. The person engaged in tinning at the open bath
was shown to be exposed to much more danger than one working at
a hooded bath, while the wiper was exposed to even more danger
than the tinner using an open bath, since not only was he inhaling
fume from the hot article, but also fibre to which considerable
quantities of metallic lead and tin adhered.
Analysis of samples of dust collected in different parts of the
workroom bore out the conclusions derived from analysis of the
fumes. Thus, samples collected from ledges at varying heights
above the tinning bath containing the mixture of tin and lead
contained percentages of soluble lead (lead chloride) in striking
amount as compared with samples collected at points in the same
room remote from any source of lead fume, while the insoluble lead
present, as was to be expected from the fact that it consisted of lead
attached to particles of tow floating in the air, was less variable.
TABLE XII., SHOWING QUANTITIES OF LEAD (Pb) IN THE
ATMOSPHERE AT BREATHING LEVEL.
(G. E. Duckering’s Experiments.)

Approximate
Present in Quantities
10 Cubic Metres of Lead (Pb)
of Air Estimated Time expressed
(Milligrammes). (in Hours) in Milligrammes
during which inhaled by Percentage
Total Lead Inhalation Worker of Lead
Occupation. Dust. (Pb). took place. per Day. in Dust.
(1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6)
Tinner using — 37·79 5¹⁄₂ 10·70 — T
open bath

Tinner using — 6·36 5¹⁄₂ 1·80 — T

bath
covered by
hood, and
having
fumes
 exhausted
by draught
of furnace
Wiping off — 124·31 5¹⁄₂ 35·20 — 1
(tinning)

Earthenware 38 1·80 7¹⁄₂ 0·69 (average 8·30 D

dipping of 4 expts.)
(pottery)
Earthenware 84 6·27 7¹⁄₂ 2·40 (single 7·42 V
dipping expt.)
(pottery)

China dipping 36 2·12 7³⁄₄ 0·83 (average 5·43 C

(pottery) of 4 expts.)

Rockingham 44 2·26 7¹⁄₂ 0·86 (single 14·37 D

ware dipping expt.)
(pottery)
Earthenware 47 2·29 7¹⁄₂ 0·88 (average 5·90 C
cleaning of 7 expts.)
(pottery)

China ware 123 13·34 6 4·08 (single 10·85 V

cleaning expt.)
(pottery)

Earthenware 25 2·19 8 0·92 (average 8·58 F

drying of 3 expts.)
(pottery)

Earthenware 34 2·08 8³⁄₄ 0·93 (average 6·58

glost placing of 3 expts.)
(pottery)
China glost 30 1·08 9 0·50 (single 3·64 B
placing expt.)
(pottery)
China glost 21 0·32 9¹⁄₂ 0·16 (single 1·50 O
 placing expt.)
(pottery)
Majolica- 61 9·11 7¹⁄₂ 3·48 (single 15·00 T
painting of expt.)
tiles
(pottery)

206 53·70 — — 26·10 P

Sand-papering
and dusting 241 116·10 — — 48·10 R
-​
railway
coaches

453 83·10 — — 18·30 A

Sand-papering
coach -​
wheels 1343 1025·60 — — 76·40 O

Sand-papering 600 278·30 — — 46·40 D

motor-car
body
 88 38·70 — — 44·00 W

Sand-papering
motor-car -​
wheels

35 4·70 — — 13·30 S

Sand-papering 494 143·80 — — 29·10 A

van wheel

Burning off old 52 3·40 — — 6·50 W

paint

Dust.—Reference to the table shows that the conditions in the

pottery workrooms, as stated in Column 7, are reflected in Columns
3 and 5. Further details from his experiments may be useful. Thus, in
a dipping room where low-solubility glaze was in use, the amount of
lead in the dust collected per 10 cubic metres of air was 0·70
milligramme. The average of four experiments where there were no
dipping boards was 1·80 milligrammes, and where dipping boards
were used, 3·75; i.e., 1·95 milligrammes of lead in the dust per 10
cubic metres of air is added by the use of dirty dipping boards. As
the result of his experiments, Duckering believes that approximately
1·95 milligrammes of lead per 10 cubic metres of air was due to the
fine spray given off in the shaking of the ware. In bright sunlight, he
says, the spray can be seen dancing high above the dipping tub. In a
dipping house where work was done slowly by two occupants only,
the proportion of lead in the measured quantity of air was also low—
0·58 milligramme per 10 cubic metres. Where, in the absence of
special provision made for admission of fresh air to a fan, the air was
drawn from a neighbouring room in which lead processes were
carried on, the amount of lead rose to 5·76 milligrammes at the level
breathed by the gatherer at a mangle. In ware-cleaning the average
of all his observations where lead was used (eleven) was 3·44
milligrammes; and he concluded that “wet cleaning of ware causes
less direct contamination of the atmosphere, even where no local
exhaust is applied. A still more important result of wet cleaning,
however, is that the overalls keep much freer of dust.” The highest
results were obtained when the process of ware-cleaning was done
outside the influence of the exhaust draught. In one instance, where
the ware was cleaned at a distance of 6 feet from the exhaust
opening, 13·34 milligrammes per 10 cubic metres of air were found.
Subsequently at the same point, after the exhaust system of
ventilation had been remodelled, 0·95 milligramme only was present.
Even in a stillage room in which no work was done other than the
placing on and removal of the boards from the racks, the lead
content per 10 cubic metres of the air was 1·08 milligrammes. In
glost-placing, the average of four experiments was 1·83
milligrammes—no doubt the result of glaze on the boards. As much
as 9·11 milligrammes of lead was found per 10 cubic metres of air in
the centre of a large majolica-painting room, with wooden floors and
much traffic in it. Wooden floors generally appeared to influence the
results, as determinations of the lead present were higher in rooms
with them than with tiled floors.
 In coach-painting the proportion of lead found by Duckering in the
air breathed during the actual time of sand-papering explains the
severe incidence of poisoning in this class of work. The table shows
the amount of lead in the air to be enormous, and in many cases
much in excess of the amount found in the air when wiping off in the
tinning of hollow-ware. The work of sand-papering is, however, very
rarely continuous, the time occupied in it being, for the painter, about
one to two hours daily; for the brush hand, two to three and a half
hours; and for the painter’s labourer, four to five hours.
Knowing intimately the processes at which the estimations
recorded in the table were made, the relative frequency of cases of
plumbism reported among those employed at them, and the duration
of employment prior to attack, we believe that, if the amount of lead
present in the air breathed contains less than 5 milligrammes per 10
cubic metres of air, cases of encephalopathy and paralysis would
never, and cases of colic very rarely, occur. And this figure is a quite
practical one in any process amenable to locally-applied exhaust
ventilation. Somewhere about 2 milligrammes, or 0·002 gramme, of
lead we regard as the lowest daily dose which, inhaled as fume or
dust in the air, may, in the course of years, set up chronic plumbism.
Local Exhaust Ventilation.—In considering preventive
measures against lead poisoning, precedence must be given to
removal of fumes and dust by locally-applied exhaust ventilation, as,
unfortunately, the wearing of a respirator is neither in itself a
sufficient protection, nor, if it were, could the constant wearing of one
be enforced. A respirator is of no use against lead fume. In the case
of dust, the conditions which it must fulfil to be effective are, first, that
the air breathed is freed from dust, and, secondly, that it should not
incommode the wearer. Further, it should be simple in construction,
easily applied, and allow of frequent renewal of the filtering medium.
No existing respirator of moderate price conforms quite satisfactorily
with these requirements. The more closely to the face it is made to
fit, and the more effectually the air is filtered, the greater is the
inconvenience experienced when it is worn. This inconvenience is
due to the exertion (showing itself in increase of the respiratory
movements and pulse-rate) caused in aspirating the air through the
filtering medium, and rebreathing some portion of the expired breath,
containing a much greater proportion of carbonic acid gas and of
moisture at a higher temperature than are present in fresh air.
Respirators, therefore, except for work lasting a short time—half an
hour to an hour—cannot be considered an effective or sufficient
means of protecting the worker against dust. If a respirator must be
worn, the simplest form is a pad of ordinary non-absorbent cotton-
wool (absorbent wool quickly becomes sodden and impervious),
about 3 inches by 4 inches, placed over the mouth and nostrils, and
kept in position by elastic bands passed round the ears. The pad
should be burnt after use.
With a smooth, impervious floor, however, and ventilation
designed to remove the fumes and dust at, or as near as possible to,
the point of origin, lead poisoning would become very rare in most of
the industries to be described. The essential points of such a system
are—(1) The draught or current of air set in motion either by heat or
by a fan; (2) the ducts along which the current travels; (3) the hoods
or air-guides designed to intercept and catch the fumes and dust at
the point of generation; (4) inlets from the outside air into the room to
replace continuously the air extracted, and, in many cases, (5) a
suitable dust filter or collector.
Exhaust by Heat.—Processes giving rise to fumes or to dust
liberated on stirring or skimming, which can be dealt with by the
draught created in the furnace flue or over a bath of molten metal
provided with adequate hood and duct up which the heated air
travels, are—Smelting, refining, spelter manufacture, and the
numerous operations necessitating the melting of lead, such as
tinning with a mixture of tin and lead, sheet lead and lead piping,
stereo pots in letterpress printing, pattern-making, tempering springs,
file-hardening, etc. The dusting of red-hot metallic surfaces, as in
vitreous enamelling, might possibly also be dealt with in the same
way. The disadvantage of the exhaust by heat is the uncertainty and
inequality of the draught, and the size of the duct necessary to cope
with the volume of rarefied air from above the molten vessel.
The closer the hood is brought down over the point where the
fumes escape, the less risk is there of cross-currents deflecting them
into the workroom. Hence all baths of molten metal should have the
sides and back closed in, leaving as small a space open in front as is
practicable in view of necessary skimming or other operations.
In the case of tinning baths, Duckering[4] describes completely
successful results when from the top of the hood a shaft at least 24
inches in diameter was carried vertically upwards into the open air to
a height of 18 feet, and the top of the shaft fitted with a wind screen
in the form of a very large cone, having its lower edge below the
upper edge of the shaft, and its nearest point at least 8 inches from
the top of the shaft. Smoke produced in large quantity at any point 6
inches outside the front of the hood was entirely drawn into it. As,
however, the inrush of air caused an eddy of the fumes at the upper
edge of the opening, the edges of the hood were turned inwards, so
that the operation of wiping was done in a sort of short tunnel. In
general, it may be said that the diameter of pipes leading from hoods
to the outer air (on the efficacy of the draught in which success
depends) is much too small. Frequently mere increase in size will
convert an indifferent draught into a good one. The height of the
hood also—i.e., the distance between its lower border and the point
where it joints the duct—is of importance. The shorter this distance
is, the less serviceable does it become for the removal of fume.
Indeed, it may even retain the fume which, were the hood not
present, would rise to the roof. Sometimes safety is increased by
making the hood double, leaving a space between the two sheets,
and so concentrating the draught at the centre and at the margin.
With a fan, ducts of less diameter can be used than when
dependence is placed on heat alone. A duct carried into a chimney-
stack has the advantage of dispersing the fume at a safe distance
from the workroom.
The variableness of the draught produced by heat makes it
unsuitable for removal of dust, except such as arises from skimming.
The receptacle for the skimmings should always be kept inside the
canopy of the hood. We have, however, seen the dust given off in
the heading of yarn dyed with chromate of lead successfully carried
away under hoods connected up by branch ducts with the main
chimney-stack.
 Fig. 1.—Davidson’s Sirocco Propeller Fan.

Exhaust by Fans.—The draught for removal of dust, and

frequently also of fumes, is produced by a fan, of which there are two
types: (1) low-pressure volume fans and (2) high-pressure
centrifugal fans. In the first the draught is created by the rotation of a
wheel with inclined vanes, causing the air to be driven transversely
through the wheel parallel to the axis of rotation (Fig. 1). During a
revolution a portion of the air is cut off from one side of the wheel,
and transferred through the wheel to the other. Such fans are light,
run easily, and are cheap. They are of many forms, both with regard
to the number of blades—from two to eight—and general manner in
which they are arranged. Some closely resemble the screw-propeller
of a ship, while others have blades turned over and fastened on an
outer rim. Their main defect is inability to overcome any but slight
resistance in the course of suction behind, as from constriction in, or
friction along the sides of, the ducts and right-angled bends, or of
outflow in front, as from wind-pressure. Under favourable conditions,
however, and when carefully fitted, a volume fan will exhaust dust
and fumes through a system of ducts several feet in length, as, for
example, from mono and linotype machines and electro melting-pots
in letterpress printing works. But, in order to avoid resistance from
friction, the ducts have to be somewhat larger in diameter than when
a centrifugal fan is used. With nine[A] linotype machines connected
up to a 14-inch propeller fan, the branch ducts should be about 4
inches in diameter, and the main duct 12 inches, increasing from 12
to 15 inches within 2 feet of the fan-box. The shorter and straighter
the course of the duct to the propeller fan, the more efficiently it
works. Wind-guards are necessary to overcome resistance from this
source in front, but their position requires to be carefully considered,
so as to prevent the screen itself crippling the outflow.
[A] If gratings are also inserted in the same duct for general ventilation the
number of machines must be decreased pro ratâ.

All fans require frequent cleaning, and in this respect propeller

fans have the advantage over centrifugal, in that they are usually
more accessible.
 Fig. 2.—Davidson’s Dust Centrifugal Fan.

Centrifugal Fans.—Generally, in the removal of dust, a strong

suction has to be set up in a system of narrow ducts by means of a
centrifugal fan—i.e., a fan-wheel formed by a number of vanes
attached to an axle mounted in a spiral-shaped casing—so that
when the wheel rotates air is carried along by the vanes, and flies off
tangentially into the space between the blades and the casing, and
thence to the outlet (Fig. 2). The air inlet or junction of the fan with
the exhaust duct is at the centre of the fan, an arrangement by which
the kinetic energy created by the rapid motion of the air leads to
increase of draught instead of being wasted in production of eddies
in the surrounding spaces. They are made in many different
patterns, according to the nature of the work to be done. Their