Elites lacking portable skills become hostages to their conservative rank and file.
Evidence
The conservative Czech party leaders deliberately replicated a pattern of “closed” elite advancement – elites could rise only within and through the party ranks. The purges and recruitment policies of the Czech communist party rewarded neither education nor extramural experience, but ideological loyalty. — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 216 (
#expands, via linked claim)
The highest classes, as everyone knows, are the most conservative, and frequently enough they are even archaic. They dread every motion and change, not because they have an antipathy for the contents or because the latter are injurious to them, but simply because it is change and because they regard every modification of the whole as suspicious and dangerous. No change can bring them additional power, and every change can give them something to fear, but nothing to hope for. The real variability of historical life is therefore vested in the middle classes — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 740 (
#qualifies, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Elites fear change because it can only threaten their status — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 740; Closed recruitment selecting for ideological loyalty produced hidebound elites unable to adapt — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 216; A class becomes hegemonic when its elite transcends narrow corporate interests (+2 more)
Related
- Closed recruitment selecting for ideological loyalty produced hidebound elites unable to adapt (similarity 0.88)
- Lacking portable skills made new party elites hostage to conservative members and orthodox committees. (similarity 0.86)
- Closed ideological-selection elites left the Czech party unable to adapt by 1989 (similarity 0.82)
- Orthodox elites denied younger cadres reform experience, leaving the party unable to adapt. (similarity 0.82)
- Recruitment openness and internal pluralism determined which communist elites could later transform their parties. (similarity 0.79)
- Elite skills accumulate even when reform efforts fail (similarity 0.79)
- Maintaining ideological rigidity blocks elite turnover and party renewal (similarity 0.79)
- Elite skill, not ideology, drove communist party organizational regeneration (similarity 0.79)
- Elite inexperience and conservative dominance blocked Czechoslovak communist reform (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- Closed recruitment selecting for ideological loyalty produced hidebound elites unable to adapt
#expands(0.85) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 216 - A class becomes hegemonic when its elite transcends narrow corporate interests
#corroborates(0.80) - Elites fear change because it can only threaten their status
#qualifies(0.75) — Georg Simmel, on individuality and social forms_…, 740