Elite Politics in the Context of Ethnocultural Groups
Glossary of Terms.
Ethnoculture: The word is specifically used to denote both Ethnos (ethnicity) which possesses a component of ancestry and culture as the set of behaviours associated with the community.
In effect there are many cultures which are not ethnocultures, for instance goths or punks possessing similar characteristics across states and even continents but being constructed on becoming, acts rather than birth, whereas ethnocultures for the most part preserve either perceived lineage or association with that lineage (through marriage, adoption, etc.)
State-Space: The word is specifically used to illustrate the concrete nature of the state as the limiting factor of analysis contrasted against the world-system. State space applied concretely usually denotes specific actions of states upon striated spaces which they seek to denote towards instrumental functions — but in this case the relation is applied universally to illustrate that any ethnocultural elite group which exists is fundamentally joined to the state and at its whim.
Part I: Internal Ethnocultural Dynamics
Any state will inherently be ethnocentric due to the self-perpetuating systems that undergird the political space. These systems can include language (the language of state), cultural expression and modes or particularities of thought. Even without any direct interference by civil or state organizations the adherence to specific cultural expression and the position within or outside these political-social systems determines the relative position of ethnocultural groups.
This is of course still separate from any openly or covertly xenophobic policies which act to centralize power to one ethnocultural group or at least prevent certain groups from gaining power. These policies however vary both in scope and intensity depending on state and region and aren’t worthwhile to discuss in the abstract.
Given the different access to state resources and power that different ethnocultural groups have, it is worthwhile to separate them into “core” and “peripheral” groups, borrowing on the descriptions of dependency theory applied to the world system (1) and reapplying it in the context of a singular state. The core group(s) has access to state machinery and political/economic power, while the peripheral groups are marginalized from these mechanisms.
Certainly, in the context of dependency theory there also exist semi-peripheral ethnocultures, which even if they do not have power within the overarching state structure, still possess some sort of autonomy within their regions and local governments allowing them to make legislation benefiting themselves at the expense of other marginalized groups. A similar role is played by ethnocultural groups on a less spatially demarcated and formal scale, such as is seen with “model minorities”(2).
Part II: Elite Theory in the context of Ethnocultural Populations
Just as nations have disparate power relations to the state so to do the individual people of such nations, which manifest themselves within the context of power hierarchies. These power hierarchies can appear as classes, or wealth and income scales, or even be bounded within some special cultural signifiers that separate the rulers from the ruled.
Any sort of empirical indicator wouldn’t be able to capture the full width and breath of power holders within a society, but we can outline contours and processes by which an elite is created, expands and accepts new entrants. The elite which is synonymous with those who sit at the top of such power hierarchies and who in their interactions between each other and with those on the lower rungs determine societal direction and state policy.
This leadership is heterogenous in the sense that it mixes conscious direction and organic interaction in all social spaces where such elite direction occurs. The goal oriented executive meetings in a corporate boardroom possess the elements of conscious direction (of the firm and of the wider economy) while a fancy dinner behind closed doors allows for the reproduction of clientelism and status-seeking behavior which among the more general population is referred to as networking.
Just as how we can speak of an elite within a society, so too can we speak of the elites of national groups. In fact, in any sort of community, in any social space there emerges some form of power hierarchy with some form of elite, so to see the societal elite get reproduced on the level of an ethnocultural group isn’t particularly difficult. If we are to go back to our understanding of the positionality of ethnocultural groups to the state, we can ascribe to even peripheral groups their own subjectivity in the generation and reproduction of their culture, their own radio stations, their own newspapers, and information channels which are separate from those of wider society.
There are two definitions here and their difference and individual significance immediately becomes apparent.
The first is definition is of an “elite of national origin” which is part of the general machinery of the state. Said elite is either assimilated to the governing group of the state (such for instance was the case with the foreign minister of Japan Tojo, who himself was of Korean origin), or representative — that is being seen as to some extent being aligned with the ethnic faction while it participates in the conduct of the state.
The second is the “elite of the nation”, that is the elite specifically related to national character. Here we are referring to the nation as a psychosocial category, at once a social object of belief and an entity of both emotional and moral yearning. The elite here is that which determines the subjectivity of the nation, what can be described as a “national consciousness”. The literature of a nation, its poetry, the national and religious ceremonies which surround it, even the “cultural spaces” which denote places of national communication are all produced by a minority elite.
These categories while separate strongly overlap with the size of the overlap coinciding with the acceptance of a nation within the society it is situated. The less accepted a nation is in the society that it exists in, the fewer members of it will be represented in the elite of that society. This occurs firstly because acceptance of nationals into the societal elite faces the barriers of ethnic exclusion and secondly because even when such acceptance is granted, the elite of national origin may not be accepted by the nationals themselves, instead being evaluated as a form of ethnic betrayal. If their integration into the state structures is effectuated without the national support that they once had then they risk of losing the confidence of their population and having it turn towards an ethnocultural counter-elite.
At the extreme of total integration, the national elite is equivalent to the societal elite. For instance, the elite of the Russian Empire was firmly embedded within the Russian social consciousness, Dostoevsky was both an author of “the Russian nation” and a member of the Russian Empire. This is the case with most forms of core elite representation. By contrast in the periphery, on the other side of the extreme the national elite is completely detached from the state or societal elite, this can be seen in the case of the Jewish ghetto in Medieval Europe, a distinct cultural space where the power of the Jewish elite extended over its own population through rabbinical missives and community councils but was still separated from the societal elite by means of religious and feudal authority, which would put the Jewish communities at a constant risk of expulsion.
Part III: Elite Escape, Offshoring.
Having first established the existence of the “national elite” as distinct from the “societal” elite we should move to look at how said elite orients itself towards the state from the general population. In the context of the world system, dependency theory provides an explanation for the conduct of elite groups at the periphery separating their actions into developmentalist and predatory (also called comprador) strands. Here the orientation of the elite is made in the context of their relation to the core of the world system (advanced capitalist countries) and to its own population.
The positionality of the elite, what determines if it is developmentalist or predatory depends primarily on its attitude and relation to the rest of the population. Does it seek to improve the livelihood of the population and enrich society, or does it seek to enrich itself at the population’s expense? Here of course we must distinguish between positionality as an abstract position with concrete consequences, and any virtue or internal motivation which we may ascribe to such an elite. It is entirely possible that the elite of a particular peripheral state wholeheartedly believes in a particular set of reforms which then turns out to be disastrous for the general population.
For instance, in 1990s Mozambique the transition from a centrally planned economy to market orientation was seen as a necessity to recover from the consequences of the civil war, and the resulting degradation of the economy may have been initially unforeseen. Similarly, elites seen as developmentalist such as South Korea under Park Chung-Hee or Venezuela under Chavez and Maduro achieve a natural economic consolidation during their elite consolidation to the point where the economic policy of industrialization is a consequence of power struggles and power sharing within elite groups.
A key social mechanism which helps (in part) to distinguish developmentalism and predation is offshoring. On one hand the offshoring of elite wealth atrophies internal development which contributes to the immiseration of the population, on the other hand the act of offshoring signals a lack of confidence in the country’s own internal situation. In the event of a revolution or even in the limited fallout of an elite struggle, the defeated side flees to its Swiss bank accounts and London properties, ensuring a quiet retirement away from the limelight of power.
Offshoring doesn’t limit itself in the acquisition of property or in financial outflow. As an example, for most of the peripheral and semi-peripheral elite the education of their children is performed in the highest foreign institutions, from Kim Jung Un’s education in Switzerland to Xi Jinping’s daughter’s career at Harvard. This allows them to both obtain an education which may not be possible in their home states, and to forge connections with other members of the international elite.
Of course, in most cases the elite cannot offshore itself, as even at the height of the colonial system European powers had to depend on landed settlers and indigenous intermediaries to rule their colonies. Being too far away from state institutions and existing power hierarchies leads to a certain loss of control and puts you at the mercy of the hosting state. As a result, states hosting external and continually ruling elites are usually those that have some sort of influence over or shared culture with the state the elite hails from, moreover even their external influence is primarily exerted through finance, trade, and various other forms of more indirect pressure.
As an example of the problematic that can arise from physical elite offshoring, we can look at Mohammed Hussein Al Amoudi, an Ethiopian magnate (and the richest man in the country) who now lives in Saudi Arabia, and who was imprisoned for two years during the purge initiated by the Saudi Prince bin Salman in 2017. His release in January 2019 occurred after multiple rather ineffectual appeals by the Ethiopian government.
Part IV — Ethnocultural Elite and “Offshoring” in the State-Space.
The world-system which is usually defined through the actions of states as subjects, is quite a bit distinct from state-space where the state itself is defined as both a subject that acts within society and an object over which society is in constant conflict. Functionally if in the international system the societal elite possesses some autonomy of action through the state which in term is disciplined by the world-system (meaning by other states and international organizations) — within the state-space it is the state which acts as the primary disciplinarian of the ethnocultures (and by extension the ethnocultural elite) within its borders.
If the elite is part of a core (ruling) ethnoculture or semi-peripheral (controlling certain aspects of production or certain regions within the state-space) it can use the mechanisms of the state for the administration of other ethnocultural groups. Through the power of the state entire ethnocultural groups can be administratively created from whole cloth or, conversely, erased from existence. For instance, the definition of “hispanic” as a person of descent from Spanish speaking states dovetails with the United States’ history of imperial administration of Spanish speaking countries which continues to this day in Puerto Rico. The exact nature of the policy was to fold distinct groups of people under a single banner of imperial administration by means of a new fabricated culture. On the other hand, the government of Japan had denied the existence of Ainu (indigenous people to the Hokaido Peninsula, who were conquered by Japan in the 19th century distinct culturally and ethnically from the Yamato Japanese) in its administrative mechanisms until 2008, when they were recognized by a non-binding resolution. In Japan’s case the primary goal had been the assimilation of the Ainu people, and the state’s denial of their existence was entirely in the pursuit of that objective.
It is under these conditions that the elite of peripheral ethnocultures similarly take positions in regards the state. While the definitions of “developmentalist” and “predatory” don’t necessarily apply in the state-space as in the world-system the similar fundamental points of “bargaining for the population” that developmentalism presents and “bargaining for itself” that predation presents continue to apply. After all, developmentalism, and an elite that resists the excesses of the world system seeks in the end to join the very same world system it opposes but on better grounds, whether it is to develop its own mega corporations or to join international financial institutions as a donor rather than a recipient. In the state-space then the ultimate aim of ethnocultural elites is to gain state resources either for themselves at the expense of their population or to gain resources for both themselves and their population under a new state arrangement.
Ethnocultural elite predation can be seen in a variety of colonial contexts. A classic case is the British subjugation of India which occurred in collaboration with local Indian princes and the Indian Civil Service which administered the continent was primarily composed of Indians educated in British universities. By bargaining with the British Empire at the expense of the general population, Indian elites were able to obtain various privileges which set them apart and made them more “civilized” in the eyes of the British conquerors. Here the offshoring was a social act of separation between the masses of the population and the elite which carved out as space for itself by that exact measure of sacrificing the population. Later, the Indian elite began to change course little by little and resist British occupation — it was no accident that significant leaders of Indian and Pakistani independence (Mohandas Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Muhammad Ali Jinnah) all studied at British universities. This counter-elite arose from the inability of sections of the Indian elite and population to find full accommodation in the state-space constructed by the British Empire.
The opposite example can be found in South Africa where the white elite had dominated the country under Apartheid through extremely formalized ethnocentric rule. The Boer (Dutch) and British settlers represented different ethnocultural groups who had less than a century ago gone to war with one another over control of what would become with British victory South Africa, but the increasing resistance of the majority Black population (representing different ethnocultural groups) forced them to consolidate power. Attempts were made to negotiate with predatory sections of the Black elite to create Bantustans, enclaves of self-governing black communities that were consolidated under the rule of local tribal elites who in theory had autonomy but were fundamentally dependent on the Apartheid of the South African government. The situation proved increasingly untenable as even the population in certain Bantustans began organizing in support of the larger emancipation movements that were occurring throughout South Africa, movements which (exceptionally) began to be upheld in the world system.
It was at this point that the South African elite did a U-turn began to prepare for a transition of power. The previous President P.W Botha had presided over an increasing centralization of power on his office, an expansion of the security state, further limitation of free speech and the creation of Bantustans. He was replaced in 1989 by F. W. de Klerk who began the reforms which would first legalize the ANC and then completely dismantle the Apartheid government.
It is important to note that de Klerk was the Minister of Education in Botha’s government, moreover he had defended Apartheid and assisted Botha in expanding the security state. When he was elected President, he was expected by all sides to take a similar conservative approach. The reforms therefore came as a complete surprise to observers. Moreover, during the reforms to hand over power de Clerk’s new government engaged in two interesting policies. The first was the dismantling of the protectionist barriers that South Africa had developed during Apartheid, done in collaboration with the ANC which as part of the reform process had agreed to moderate its historically socialist leanings, while the second was the dismantling of South Africa’s nuclear program, becoming the first country in the world to denuclearize.
It is hard to identify what the reason for these actions was, why an insider in the South African elite would reverse course and endorse full-heartedly the positions that would have seemed antithetical to South Africa not 5 years ago. But coincidentally the two moves are perfectly explained by the framework that the South African elite was attempting to preserve its power while cutting itself off from its primary constituency: the white (anglo-boer) population.
Ceding control of state mechanisms to the ANC meant exposing the white elite to the wrath of national liberation which in the rest of Africa included at a minimum property seizure all the way to retaliatory ethnic cleansing. The opening of the South African economy which had previously strong protectionism and state industry collaboration was a direct offshoring of South African financial resources to the stock exchanges of core imperial states, where any interference in the firm’s operations by the new state would be seen as an assault on the interest of core shareholders. The primary mechanism of this offshoring was the primary listing of the largest South African corporations (Billiton, Miller, Old Mutual and Liberty, Anglo-American Company) on the London Stock Exchange from 1997 to 1999(1). Insulated from any sort of attempts to redistribute Apartheid era financial and political resources these companies began either multinationals or merged with other large multi-nationals.
Such situation, though appearing common to countries that joined the world-system or implemented neoliberal reforms is rare. The economic relations that develop from the breakdown of the state-business structure and opening either involve the acquisition of equity share in weak domestic firms by foreign firms, through FDI (foreign direct investment) as has occurred in the majority of Latin America or conversely in the expansion of strong domestic firms into the world market, as occurred in states such as Russia and South Korea. Generally, it is the semi-peripheral states to the world system, meaning states that can create a certain level of internal production for investment are the ones able to expand their firms abroad. Rare is it that the firms of a particular state such as South Africa purposefully decouple themselves from the state itself and move abroad, having grown their own large investments that they no longer want to share with the state.
The free-market tack that de Klerk took is easy to understand from this point of view. The ANC had risen from an ethnocultural elite to a state elite having succeeded in its mission of ending Apartheid. The black population of South Africa for the most part had no interest in giving fealty to those very white elites that had relegated them to the apartheid system just years prior. Similarly, the white population no longer found confidence in the elite that had disempowered them and removed the Apartheid system. It was necessary for the former national elite and now current “elite of ethnic origin” to hand the majority of South Africa’s corporate power abroad, joining the core elite and receive their backing, in a simple comprador relationship that would be upheld by the ANC as part of the transitional peace process.
A Quick Aside.
An aside should be taken for a quick discussion on counter-elite and insurrectionary tendencies. Many ethnocultural elites in semi-peripheries which have strong autonomy are willing to go beyond bargaining and into insurrection, there-by to obtain national independence. In entering open conflict with the state elites (and to an extent those elites of their own ethnoculture who support bargaining) they take the position of a counter-elite which seeks to create a new order. Generally speaking, this attempt to leave the state-space is not that different from those semi-peripheral states such as the Peoples’ Republic of China which seek to reconstruct international institutions in their own image — the details of seizing power of the world system are different than exit from a state but the subject of the elite remains, and those ethnocultures that are peripheral are almost always too weak to mount resistance that is sufficient to obtain independence. Any sort of insurrectionary talk by them is at most used for bargaining, the same way the DPRK, or North Korea uses its threats of nuclear war (hypothetical destruction of the system) to obtain foreign aid. The intervention of states in counter-elite lead independence movements is much more extensive than the intervention of states in peripheral ethnocultural elites seeking bargaining within their state, therefore any sort of analysis required in this case demands a particular complexity and so this set of relations will be put aside for this post.
Citations.
(1) Amin, Samir. “An essay on the social formations of peripheral capitalism.” (1976).
Available here: https://maoistrebelnews.files.wordpress.com/2015/04/unequal-development.pdf
Amir’s work on dependency theory is the most accessible even though it is dated in it’s revolutionary predictions.
(2) Article examining the Japanese as a model minority. Ofc course there isn’t really an understanding of political economy or elite relations here but hopefully that is explained in my piece.
http://inside.sfuhs.org/dept/history/US_History_reader/Chapter14/modelminority.pdf
(3) Mohamed, Seeraj. “Anglo-American corporation and corporate restructuring in post-apartheid South Africa.” International Review of Applied Economics 34, no. 4 (2020): 439–455.
The exact citation is page 6.
