Elite Structure And State Construction

Contemporary elite theory can date back to the end of19th century, although the thought of elite ruling has a long history. The behaviorism flourish at the second half of20th century, which converts elite study into empirical study, but the elite study still don’t hold the mainstream position of academic, especially comparative to class theory. Furthermore, some shortcomings constrain the development of elite theory, such as the uncertainty of research objects and insufficiency of elite data. However, it does not mean that elite theory cannot provide an insightful understanding.How does the elite structure affect state building? This is the core question that the paper tries to answer by reviewing the classic articles. In the process of state building, the interactions between elite families turn the clan-directed local politics into integrated nation states. And the former governance structure of elite families has a significant impact on the political regime of the new-built nation states. Almost every new regime has the motivation to change. Elite structure affects the state building and regime change differently. The paper analyses the elite foundation of democracy after making a comment on the role that elite plays in the state building. What’s more, this paper develops some propositions on the base of the extant academic findings. However, those propositions will not be testified here.As a review article, there are some shortcomings in this paper. Insufficiency in empirical evidence is a fundamental one. The new developed propositions need to be testified with more cases, especially the effectiveness of elite theory.