The crisis that began during 2008 with insolvencies of giant US and UK financial institutions and the freezing of credit flows metastasized during 2009-10 into an economic-political crisis on both sides of the Atlantic. Elites – the few thousands of persons in modern societies with organized capacities to affect political and policy outcomes regularly and seriously – are pivotal actors in the crisis. Elite interactions of unparalleled breadth, frequency and intensity are impelled by it and elite actions and inactions are its main inflection points. Elites are widely blamed for causing the crisis, for worsening it by dithering, and for prioritizing immediate political needs over longer-term antidotes. Do such accusations hold water? How has the crisis changed configurations and modalities of American and European elites? What does the primacy of elites, especially non-elected elites heading central banks and supra-national institutions like the EU, ECB and IMF, along with transnational business elites, imply for democracy and its prospects?
This paper examines actions and inactions of elites on both sides of the Atlantic before and during five years of crisis, from mid-2008 to mid-2013. These are complex matters that will preoccupy studies of elites for a long time to come. Yet enough is known about causes and contours of the crisis and about elite behavior during it to permit a first analysis. We spotlight turning points in the crisis, dilemmas they posed for elites, and how the crisis has so far affected elite circulations, interactions, structures and outlooks.
