ABSTRACT
The growing number of empirical studies of selected national elites has been supplemented by two attempts at a broader synthesis of the facts regarding their social make-up, their scope, and their methods of exercising leadership. Using the reputational method, according to which selected informants nominate the individuals they consider to be most influential in local, state, and national affairs, Floyd Hunter compiled a list of several hundred top leaders across the nation. One conceptual problem in Hunter’s work concerns the categorization of national policy in rather gross, general terms, reflecting his pyramidal conception of power. The case of Nazi Germany is particularly instructive for the problem under discussion, for it shows that strategic elites may develop within a totalitarian as well as within a democratic political framework. Edward Crankshaw, whose portrait of the Soviet Union in the post-Stalin era is otherwise first-rate, tends to confuse classes with elites.
