Du Gay, P. (2008). Keyser Sze elites: market populism and the politics of institutional change in: Savage, M.

and Williams, K., Remembering Elites. Oxford, Blackwells.

Elites and elitism have negative connotations in todays political discourse. In this article, Paul du Gay seeks to show how certain anti-establishment and anti-elite discourses have played a critical role in establishing an environment in which a range of public institutions could be represented as in need of radical reform (p. 80). The author identifies a particular one, market populist in tone and substance (Franks, 2002), which reframed the purposes and norms for the senior civil service in Britain, compromising its traditional role as independent counsel of government (p. 81). Ironically, there is a rise of a new elite of anti-elitists that carries threats to political accountability and responsible government: if members do not believe they are part of an elite, and the public at large agrees, they will not adjust to their status or to the responsibilities that inevitably come with it (Zakaria, 2003) (p. 81). NO CITAES Market populism is seen by Franks (2002) as a powerful political mythology, in which the market and the people were one and the same. This meant the market was democratic, perfectly expressing the popular will through the machinery of supply and demand, poll and focus groups, superstore and Internet. It was even more democratic than any of the formal institutions of democracy, permitting without prejudice the articulation of any and all tastes and preferences. Most importantly of all, the market was militant about its democracy. It had no place for snobs, for hierarchies, for elitism and it would fight these things by its very nature (todas as citaes neste pargrafo so de Franks, 2002: 29). Democratic governance was equated with market action and any interference was represented against nothing else than the almighty will of the people. According to this author, the symbioses of market and people made any market regulator suspect. (Franks, 2002: 47). Government agents were elites operating in the corrupt political realm, far from the world of the peoples will the corporate world. In these discourses, public service professionals and experts were portrayed as rent-seekers, trying to force the price of their labour above what the market would bear(p.82). Their self-proclaimed public service ethic, likewise, was nothing but a puff to legitimize a web of monopolistic cartels whose effects were to rip off consumers by denying them access to that which would really serve their best interests: the market (Marquand, 2004) (pp. 82-3). NO CITAO Large corporations were also represented as authoritarian hierarchies that stifled initiative and enterprise. For market populists, the senior management of public and private institutions are evidently un-enterprising precisely because they are elitist, and clearly elitist because they are in some way or another averse to subjecting themselves to the rigours of full scale marketization (p. 83). Thus, they can only preserve their own power, privileges and standing at the expense of their own organizations future success and, of course, the liberation of their employees and of their most beloved rhetorical figure, the consumer, that very embodiment of the people. (p. 83).

Efforts have been made by media magnates such as Rupert Murdoch, entrepreneurs such as Richard Branson, or management gurus such as Tom Peters to cast themselves as outsiders, friends of the ordinary, of the people, continually battling away against the vested interests, to Tony Blairs insistence that he bore scars on his back from his attempts to modernize British politics and society in the face of hostility and truculence (p. 83). Market Populism has been a tool of institutional modernization for both Left and Right of politics (Franks, 2002: 189). (p.98) For market populists, any institution that does not ultimately answer to the market, in no matter how imagined or virtual a manner, and thus in so doing answer to the people, is effectively elitist and therefore a fundamentally illegitimate actor in the political life of a state (p. 98). market populism has waged war on the very idea, though not the reality, of elites so denigrates the idea of elites that its advocates cannot but deny their own elite status, presenting themselves instead as simply champions of the people and pretty straight guys. It is the dominance of this elite of market populists that led George Walden (2001: 43) to write, somewhat tongue in cheek, that in Britain for the first time in its democratic history, politics is dominated by an elite of ant-elitists. p. 98 NO CITAO

Franks, T., (2002), One Market under God, London: Vintage. Marquand, D., (2004), The Decline of the Public, Cambridge: Polity. Walden, G., (2001), The New Elites, Harmondsworth: Penguin. Zakaria, F., (2003), The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad, New York: W.W. Norton.