Data Bank

OPERA databases / OPERA Data Bank

The empirical data presented in the CEPEL database comes from the O.P.E.R.A. (Operationalizing Programmatic Elites Research in America 1988-2010) research program. This "Blanc" program, led by William Genieys, received funding from the French National Research Agency (€250,000) and ran from 2008 to 2012 (OPERA: ANR-08-BLAN-0032). The empirical study focused on the transformation of the structure of the US government's top echelons in the national defense and health insurance sectors. It resulted in the creation of 399 biographical files and approximately 200 interviews.

Initially, the survey covered a population of more than 3,000 actors in positions of power (i.e., political appointees of the president and congressional staff) from 1988 to 2010 in the health and defense sectors.
To narrow down the scope of the study of these two broad areas of public policy, we focused only on positions of power with potential decision-making authority in the context of two sectoral reforms: the expansion of health coverage (i.e., from Clinton to Obama) and Donald Rumsfeld's revolution in military affairs (RMA).

The objective of the research was to identify, over a long period of time, changes in the structure of elites who potentially participate in the policy decision-making process, and then to try to understand their actual ability to influence the content and future of reforms.

The list of positions was compiled using congressional directories, accessible from the Lexis Nexis database:

(i) For the legislative branch, staffers listed in committees and subcommittees related to the area of public policy under study were selected.

(ii) For the executive branch, the president's advisors on defense and health policy, ministers up to five hierarchical levels below, agency directors, and members of the relevant staffs were selected.

Our sociography is based on the reconstruction of individual biographical files using data from several sources: institutional websites (White House, DOD, DHHS, Congress), Who’s Who in America?, Leadership Library, First Street, Revolving Doors, Source Watch, Wikipedia, Legistorm, LinkedIn, and all other sources available on the web.