ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that strategic elites are new historical phenomena; the social and cultural circumstances that have led to their emergence. The industrial revolution permitted the rise of a new strategic elite and with it a new principle of recruitment. Specialization thus affects the strategic elites no less than the general population and makes of that common centripetal core group a divided and separate series of specialists. The strategic elites, whose function is to act on behalf of the various aspects of the social system, likewise become dissociated from the membership that selects them. Strategic elites must perceive the whole of social life, be articulate where the mass is mute, and stand for the ultimate purposes of communal life, emphasizing the public rather than private interest. The rise of strategic elites both reflects and reinforces the decline of local centers where much of history was once made.
