Occupational Engagement and Partisanship in the United States
| Author | Darin DeWitt |
| Published date | 01 August 2021 |
| Date | 01 August 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920932129 |
| Subject Matter | Early Results |
https://doi.org/10.1177/1478929920932129
Political Studies Review
2021, Vol. 19(3) 501 –510
© The Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/1478929920932129
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Occupational Engagement
and Partisanship in the
United States
Darin DeWitt
Abstract
In this article, I present a portrait of the American power elite and their relationship with the party
system. I focus on occupational categories as institutional positions and take up three questions:
Which occupational categories wield social influence? How politically mobilized is each of these
occupational categories? And what partisan tilt is exhibited by each category? My results help
clarify the contemporary structure of American electoral competition. Furthermore, they also
shed light on which social groups have a voice in American politics and, thus, speak to questions
of political equality.
Keywords
power elite, occupational subcultures, party identification, political inequality
Accepted: 14 May 2020
This article presents a portrait of the American power elite and their relationship with the
party system. I ask the following: Which occupational categories wield social influence?
How politically mobilized is each of these occupational categories? And what partisan tilt
is exhibited by each category?
To answer these questions, I introduce a new dataset that identifies the set of socially
influential occupational categories in contemporary America and describes partisan
mobilization and alignment for 203,973 prominent, living Americans affiliated with these
categories. With these data, I address calls in elite studies to treat the cohesion of elite
groups, on dimensions of shared identity such as partisanship, and the interconnectedness
of these groups as empirical questions (Korsnes et al., 2017).
I find that elite occupational groups vary greatly in the extent to which they publicly
engage in partisan politics—for instance, from 36% of lawyers to 13% of chief executives
and just 1% of athletes. Meanwhile, half of the socially influential occupations show a
Department of Political Science, The California State University, Long Beach, CA, USA
Corresponding author:
Darin DeWitt, Department of Political Science, The California State University, 1250 Bellflower Boulevard,
Long Beach, CA 90840-4605, USA.
Email: Darin.DeWitt@csulb.edu
932129PSW0010.1177/1478929920932129Political Studies ReviewDeWitt
research-article2020
Early Results
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