Does power sharing between competing elites result in franchise extension to non-elites? In this paper, we argue that competing, risk-averse elites will enfranchise non-elites as insurance against future, uncertain imbalances in relative bargaining power. We show that negligibly small changes in the bargaining power of non-elites, conditional on enfranchisment, via coalition formation, constrai...

© 201 0002-9 Organizing collective action to secure support from local communities provides a source of power for elites to protect their interests, but community structures constrain the ability of elites to use this power. Elites’ power is not static or self-perpetuating but changing and dynamic. There are situations in which elites are forced into movementlike struggles to mobilize support f...

We construct a simple model where political elites may block technological and institutional development, because of a “political replacement effect.” Innovations often erode elites’ incumbency advantage, increasing the likelihood that they will be replaced. Fearing replacement, political elites are unwilling to initiate change and may even block economic development. We show that the relations...

This paper is a case study of Brazilian industrialists' attitudes towards changes in labor relations during the transition to democracy. It is based on extensive interviews with 155 industrial elites in Brazil during 19871988. It explores why business elites can and will tolerate democracy, even when it does not always act in their specific interests. It focuses on four key variables in the tra...

Assessments of undernutrition are typically based on comparisons between anthropometric indicators of children and a reference standard from the US. Due to a number of problems associated with this reference standard, WHO is currently engaged in generating a new international reference standard for child growth based on well-to-do populations in a sample of poor and rich countries. The focus on...

This paper investigates the impact of elite capture on the allocation of targeted government welfare programs in Indonesia, using both a high-stakes field experiment that varied the extent of elite influence and non-experimental data on a variety of existing government transfer programs. Conditional on their consumption level, there is little evidence that village elites and their relatives are...

The class and social structure of developing nations has undergone profound transformation in recent decades as each nation has incorporated into an increasingly integrated global production and financial system. National elites have experienced a new fractionation. Emergent transnationally-oriented elites grounded in globalized circuits of accumulation compete with older nationally-oriented el...

Under what conditions are political parties, ethnic, non-ethnic or multi-ethnic, able to incorporate elites from rising ethnic categories and retain their allegiance? General theories of party politics in multi-ethnic societies propose a sociological answer to this question, according to which success or failure in elite incorporation is determined by the pattern of conflict or harmony between ...

In Evolutionary Algorithms (EA), elites are crucial to maintain good features in solutions. However, too many elites could make the evolutionary process stagnate and cannot enhance the performance. In this paper, we employ Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) and Biogeography-Based Optimization (BBO) to propose a hybrid algorithm termed Biogeography-Based Particle Swarm Optimization (BPSO) which c...