№ 6 - 2008
Gaman-Golutvina O.V.
Processes of Modern Elitogenesis: the World and National Experience. Part I.

It is key characteristics of the processes of modern elitogenesis at the global and national levels that are сonsidered in this article. The interest in the study of these processes is preconditioned by the determining influence of politically and economically dominant groups - of the political and the business elites of national and of global level – on the processes of the evolution of polities as a whole. Proving as the determining trends of elitogenesis in industrially developed countries are: essential transformation of the relations within the framework of the elites/masses dichotomy at both the global and national levels of polities; noticeable change of the styles of political leadership in the Western polities; weakening of the most significant foundations of modern Western democracies - of the principle of intra-elite consensus. Detailed research of these tendencies induces the author to turn to studying the reasons and the sources of these moves. It’s the processes of recruitment, rotation and intra-elite communications of political elites in the USA that turn out to be the priority subject in the article.