The author of this stunning set of essays on politics and public
policy makes crystal clear the meaning of the title. "The
revolutionaries of contemporary America do not seek to redistribute
privilege from those who have it to those who do not. These
radicals wish to arrange a transfer of power from those elites who
now exercise it to another elite, namely themselves, who do not.
This aspiring elite is of the same race (white), the same class
(upper middle and upper), and the same educational background (the
best colleges and universities) as those they wish to displace."
Wildavsky's bracing work takes a close look at these elites, who
probably make up little more than one percent of the population. He
sees their common denominator as hostility toward the masses,
anti-American attitudes, derision of authority, and a belief in
participatory rather than representative politics. The author
carries through these themes in a variety of essays on black-white
racial relations, social work orientations and black militancy, the
politics of budgetary reform, elite and mass trends in the
political party system, and the substitution of bureaucratic for
democratic modes of advancing the policy process. This work is, in
short, vintage Wildavsky: tough minded, spirited, and plain-spoken
political analysis.
In his new Introduction, Irving Louis Horowitz examines what has
changed and what continues to be salient in Wildavsky's line of
analysis. Essentially, the report card on The Revolt Against the
Masses is that the situation described in these essays has changed
somewhat in style but hardly at all in substance. The nuclear
shield replaces the ABM treaty, and Afghanistan replaces Vietnam as
centers of political gravity-but the same coalition of forces
across party and economy still dominate the American political
process. The justifiably famous essay on "The Two Presidencies"
shows how persistent is the gap between the conflict over domestic
priorities and the consensus on foreign policy-and why. This is, in
short, a classic text that continues to merit careful study by all
those interested in political life.
Aaron Wildavsky was, until his death in 1993, professor of
political science and public policy at the University of California
in Berkeley. He was also director of its Survey Research Center. He
served as director of the Russell-Sage Foundation, was a president
of the American Political Science Association, and held a number of
visiting professorships during his lifetime. Most recently,
Transaction has posthumously published Wildavsky's complete essays
and papers in five volumes.
Irving Louis Horowitz is Hannah Arendt distinguished university
professor emeritus at Rutgers, The State University, and longtime
friend and associate of Aaron Wildavsky.
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