The Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites: Introduction

The chapter introduces the Palgrave Handbook of Political Elites. It highlights the increasing importance of the handbook’s subject in general public and scholarly discourses, whereas since the mid-1970s, no comprehensive summary of the rapidly increasing literature on political elites had appeared. The introduction gives a definition of political elites, outlines the thematic orientation of studies of political elites during the past decades, and diagnoses a lack of a generally accepted theory or even typology for the field. The chapter concludes with a summary of the handbook’s structure.