Is the Corporate Elite Fractured, or is there Continuing Corporate Dominance? Two Contrasting Views

This article compares two recent analyses of continuity and change in the American power structure since 1900, with a main focus on the years after World War II. The first analysis asserts that the “corporate elite” has fractured and fragmented in recent decades and no longer has the unity to have a collective impact on public policy. The second analysis claims that corporate leaders remain united, albeit with moderate-conservative and ultra-conservative differences on several issues, and continue to have a dominant collective impact on public policies that involve their major goals. After comparing the two perspectives on key issues from 1900 to 1945, the article analyzes the fractured-elite theory’s three claims about the postwar era: an activist government constrained the corporate elite, the union movement negotiated a capital-labor accord; and bank boards created policy cohesion among corporations. Finally, it compares the two perspectives on tax issues, health-care policies, and trade expansion between 1990 and 2010

Oil elite networks in a transforming global oil market

This article analyses oil elite formation in light of the wider transformation that is taking place in the global oil order due to the rise of powers from the Global South, including Russia: in particular, the expansion and integration of the state-owned oil companies into the global oil market. This is done by analysing the networks that the directors of the world's largest oil companies create through their affiliations with a) other corporations, b) policy planning bodies and c) with the state. The most important finding is that the increased cooperation between the Western private oil companies and the non-Western state-owned oil companies has not yet translated into increased integration between their respective elite networks. It is argued that this indicates we are witnessing a transition towards a more multi-polar global oil order that increasingly needs to take into account the rising powers of the Global South. © The Author(s) 2012

The Neurocognitive Theory of Dreaming

A comprehensive neurocognitive theory of dreaming based on the theories, methodologies, and findings of cognitive neuroscience and the psychological sciences. G. William Domhoff's neurocognitive theory of dreaming is the only theory of dreaming that makes full use of the new neuroimaging findings on all forms of spontaneous thought and shows how well they explain the results of rigorous quantitative studies of dream content. Domhoff identifies five separate issues—neural substrates, cognitive processes, the psychological meaning of dream content, evolutionarily adaptive functions, and historically invented cultural uses—and then explores how they are intertwined. He also discusses the degree to which there is symbolism in dreams, the development of dreaming in children, and the relative frequency of emotions in the dreams of children and adults. During dreaming, the neural substrates that support waking sensory input, task-oriented thinking, and movement are relatively deactivated. Domhoff presents the conditions that have to be fulfilled before dreaming can occur spontaneously. He describes the specific cognitive processes supported by the neural substrate of dreaming and then looks at dream reports of research participants. The “why” of dreaming, he says, may be the most counterintuitive outcome of empirical dream research. Though the question is usually framed in terms of adaptation, there is no positive evidence for an adaptive theory of dreaming. Research by anthropologists, historians, and comparative religion scholars, however, suggests that dreaming has psychological and cultural uses, with the most important of these found in religious ceremonies and healing practices. Finally, he offers suggestions for how future dream studies might take advantage of new technologies, including smart phones

An invitation to a four-network theory of power: a new viewpoint compatible with elite theory

"Starting with the multinetwork theories advocated by C. Wright Mills, Michael Mann and Richard Lachmann, and drawing on work by specialists in anthropology and social psychology, this article presents a history of social power from hunting and gathering societies to the present. Collective power, based on cooperation, came first in human history, with distributive power coming much later. With the rise of permanent hierarchical organizations at the dawn of civilization, the issue of distributive power became paramount, making it necessary to resolve distributive power conflicts among leaders before collective power could expand any further. At this point the rank-and-file lost their ability to replace organizational leaders, who then became 'political elites' or 'power elites'. The result was the kind of top-down societies analyzed by John Higley and Michael Burton in Elite Foundations of Liberal Democracy, which provides a provocative new challenge to traditional theories of democracy." (author's abstract

The Elusive Rentier Rich: Piketty's Data Battles and the Power of Absent Evidence

The popularity of Thomas Piketty?s research on wealth inequality has drawn attention to a curious question: why was widening wealth inequality largely neglected by mainstream economists in recent decades? To explore and explain that neglect, I draw on the writing of the early neoclassical economist John Bates Clark, who introduced the notion of the marginal productivity of income distribution at the end of the nineteenth century. I then turn to Piketty?s Capital in order to analyze the salience of marginal productivity theories of income today. I suggest that most of the criticism and praise for Piketty?s research is focused on data that are accessible and measurable, obscuring attention to questions over whether current methods for measuring economic capital are defensible or not. My overarching aim is to explore how ?absent? data in economics as a whole help to reinforce blind spots within mainstream economic theory

Terror and bliss? Commonalities and distinctions between sleep paralysis, lucid dreaming, and their associations with waking life experiences

Sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming are both dissociated experiences related to rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Anecdotal evidence suggests that episodes of sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming are related but different experiences. In this study we test this claim systematically for the first time in an online survey with 1928 participants (age range: 18–82 years; 53% female). Confirming anecdotal evidence, sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming frequency were related positively and this association was most apparent between lucid dreaming and sleep paralysis episodes featuring vestibular-motor hallucinations. Dissociative experiences were the only common (positive) predictor of both sleep paralysis and lucid dreaming. Both experiences showed different associations with other key variables of interest: sleep paralysis was predicted by sleep quality, anxiety and life stress, whereas lucid dreaming was predicted by a positive constructive daydreaming style and vividness of sensory imagery. Overall, results suggest that dissociative experiences during wakefulness are reflected in dissociative experiences during REM sleep; while sleep paralysis is related primarily to issues of sleep quality and wellbeing, lucid dreaming may reflect a continuation of greater imaginative capacity and positive imagery in waking states

“Public Policy is Like Having a Vaudeville Act”: Languages of Duty and Difference among Think Tank-Affiliated Policy Experts

This research note uses in-depth interviews, ethnographic observations, and archival records to examine the self-understandings of think tank-affiliated policy experts. I argue that policy experts draw on a series of idioms—those of the academic scholar, the political aide, the entrepreneur, and the media specialist—to construct a unique albeit synthetic professional identity. The essence of the policy expert’s role lies in a continuous effort to balance and reconcile the contradictory imperatives associated with these idioms. An analysis of the policy expert’s mixed “professional psyche” offers a useful point of entry into the objective social structure of the think tank

Networks of corporate power revisited

This paper examines developments through the quarter century since the publication of Stokman, Ziegler and Scott's (1985) iconic ten-nation study of the structure of interlocking directorships. The surprising decline of research in the area following the publication of Networks of Corporate Power is in part testimony to the rigour of the comparative methods used, raising the standard of evidence required for subsequent director interlock studies. But it also reflected a critical weakness in director interlock research to that point, the limited ability to answer what Mark Mizruchi has called the “So what?” question. While replicated studies found clear structures in director interlocks, varying from country to country, and there was some speculative fit with the distinctive political economies of these countries, there was little evidence of any effect of these structures on firm performance or activity. The more recent resurgence in director interlock research is in some ways rooted in a second generation of the original drivers; the ready availability of now large masses of data on firm governance and firm level performance and further advances in social network analytical techniques. Where Stokman and his colleagues manually compiled lists of directors scoured from company reports, these data are now routinely collected and compiled in accessible databases by government agencies and business information services in many countries. And there has been a gradual accumulation of advances in addressing the “so what” question

Tracking potentiating states of dissociation: An intensive clinical case study of sleep, daydreaming, mood, and depersonalization/derealization

This study examined in real time the role of sleep and daydreaming as potentiating states for subsequent dissociation in depersonalization/derealization disorder (DDD). Research and theory suggests that dissociation may be exacerbated and maintained by a labile sleep-wake cycle in which ‘dream-like’ mentation intrudes into waking life and fuels dissociative symptoms. We explore and extend this idea by examining the state of daydreaming in dissociation. Daydreaming is a state of consciousness between dreaming and waking cognition that involves stimulus-independent and task-unrelated mentation. We report the results of a unique intensive N=1 study with an individual meeting diagnostic criteria for DDD. Using experience-sampling methodology, the participant rated (six times daily for 40 days) current daydreaming, mood, and dissociative symptoms. At the start of each day sleep quality and duration was also rated. Daydreaming was reported on 45% of occasions and significantly predicted greater dissociation, in particular when daydreams were repetitive and negative (but not fanciful) in content. These relationships were mediated by feelings of depression and anxiety. Sleep quality but not duration was a negative predictor of daily dissociation and also negatively predicted depression but not anxiety. Findings offer initial evidence that the occurrence and content of daydreams may act as potentiating states for heightened, in the moment, dissociation. The treatment implications of targeting sleep and daydreaming for dissociative disorders are discussed