CEPEL

Methodology

The empirical data used in our book comes from the O.P.E.R.A. research program (Operationalizing Programmatic Elites Research in America 1988–2010). This “white” program, led by William Genieys, received funding from the French National Research Agency (250,000 euros) and ran from 2008 to 2012 (OPERA: ANR-08-BLAN-0032). The empirical study focused on the transformation of the structure of the U.S. government’s top leadership in the health and defense sectors.

The fieldwork was conducted by a team composed of senior and junior researchers. The senior team consisted of Jean Joana (Professor, University of Montpellier 1), Saïd Darviche, Marc Smyrl (Assistant Professor, University of Montpellier 1), Sébastien Guignier (IEP Bordeaux), and William Genieys (Senior Researcher, CNRS). The junior team consisted, on the one hand, of two postdocs recruited at CEPEL-UM1, Ben Jensen (American University) and Catherine Hoeffler (Sciences Po Paris), and, on the other hand, of two doctoral students, Anne-Laure Beaussier and Ulrike Lepont.
The empirical data on U.S. elites collected in the field fall into two distinct but complementary categories. The first involves the creation of a socio-biographical database on the positional elites under study, and the second consists of numerous interviews conducted on-site in Washington, D.C., largely by the young researchers.

It should also be noted that the collection and analysis of empirical data are part of the development of the programmatic approach. We developed this method to analyze the role of certain groups of actors or elites in the formulation of public policy reforms in Europe (Genieys and Smyrl, 2008; Genieys, 2010). Originally formulated to study the transformation of the upper echelons of the French welfare state, it was recently revised by Genieys and Hassenteufel (2012) to be applied to other case studies. Here, it is adapted to the structure of power in the United States, specifically the “checks and balances” system (i.e., Congress and the executive branch), with the aim of understanding the elite configurations of decision-making regarding health and defense policies.
The programmatic approach is structured around two distinct yet converging stages of empirical research (see table below for the characteristics of the programmatic approach):
1) a quantitative stage: a longitudinal sociographic study (i.e., spanning more than 20 years) of a sample of actors characterized by the duration of their tenure in positions of power;
2) A qualitative phase: a study conducted through in-depth interviews carried out using a “snowball” sampling method with “key informants” who are known to have played an important role in certain decisions or reforms within a selected area of public policy; these informants, in turn, provide us with a list of actors to interview within the “decision-making” positions selected for our research.

The programmatic approach requires completing the first phase, which is devoted to a longitudinal sociographic study spanning a period of ten to twenty years, on the basis of which “positional elites” will be analyzed. For the OPERA study focusing on the U.S. case, we selected the period 1988–2010. This time frame is intended to cover a sufficiently long period to measure the continuity of elite careers at the highest levels of the executive branch and Congress, while accounting for the effects of political transitions. We thus analyzed three Republican and three Democratic administrations. Congress, for its part, is covered from the 100th to the 111th Congress, or twelve sessions, including five half-sessions during which the sitting president held a majority in both chambers: Clinton during the 103rd, Bush Jr. during the 107th, 108th, 109th, and finally Obama during the 111th.
Starting from there, we first identified a population of over 3,000 actors holding positions within the power structure (i.e., senior executive appointees and congressional staffers) from 1988 to 2010 in the health and defense sectors. Next, we deliberately narrowed the scope of the study within these two broad areas of public policy, limiting it to “potentially decision-making” positions in two subfields: health insurance and the reorganization of the armed forces. The idea was to select positions related to two major sectoral reforms: the expansion of health coverage (i.e., from Clinton to Obama) and the Revolution in Military Affairs (RMA), also known as the Rumsfeld reform, regarding the restructuring of the U.S. military.
An initial list of positions was compiled using the Congressional Directories, accessible via the Lexis Nexis database
(http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=CDIR):
(i) For the legislative branch, staff members listed in the committees and subcommittees related to the public policy areas under study (i.e., health insurance and the reorganization of the armed forces) were selected;
(ii) For the executive branch, the following were selected in each sector: the President’s advisors on defense and health policy, Secretaries (ministers) up to five hierarchical levels below, agency directors, and members of the relevant staff. Among the executive branch population selected for our study, Senate oversight of appointments covers the following positions: (a) the 15 secretaries of cabinet agencies, deputy secretaries, and general counsels of these agencies; (b) director positions in regulatory agencies; (c) members of the military staffs.
We then reduced our initial population of 2,263 identified positional actors by introducing a filtering variable: for the sociographic study, we retained only those who had held positions of power within the executive or legislative branches for at least six years. We then obtained a reduced population of 399 individuals who, during the period from 1988 to 2010, remained in these positions for at least 6 years (funnel effect).
Based on this new sample of 399 individuals, we conducted socio-biographical research on each individual to create an OPERA Data Bank, upon which we then based our sociographic analysis (see Chapter 2 above). Thus, for each of them, we reconstructed an individual biographical profile by cross-referencing data available from multiple sources: institutional websites (White House, DOD, DHHS, Congress), Who’s Who in America?, Leadership Library, First Street, Revolving Doors, Source Watch, Wikipedia, LegiStorm, LinkedIn, Federal Election Commission, WhoRunsGov.com at The Washington Post, Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, Project Vote Smart, GovTrack.us, OpenCongress.org, On The Issues.org, OpenSecrets.org.

Using these individual profiles, we were then able to address the following questions: What is the proportion of women in these roles? What are their educational backgrounds, the universities they attended, and their previous professions? In what ways are their professional careers within government institutions unique? What is the average duration of these careers? Are they subject to specific patterns of mobility? What professions will they pursue if and when they leave government service? Can we develop a typology of their institutional careers?

The second empirical application of the programmatic approach follows a qualitative approach. Its aim is to “capture” the role actually played by certain elites under study in the formulation of sectoral public policy reforms. It therefore involves reconstructing the trajectories of these elites and the ideas and representations they convey within the public policy sectors under study. The objective is to assess their degree of embeddedness in the reform processes under study. In-depth interviews then allow us to measure the empirical reality of this phenomenon.
To avoid repeating the shortcomings of the positional approach to elites (i.e., we know they hold positions of power but do not know if or how they exercise it), the programmatic approach proposes narrowing the elite sample to those reputed to have had a proven influence on the direction of policy reform. To this end, we tested, based on exploratory interviews, the relevance of the selected elite positions and the influence of those who hold them. The interviews were conducted with “key informants” selected from the public and private sectors based on their presumed reputation.
This initial series of in-depth interviews with elites chosen based on reputation—and who were not necessarily part of our initial sample—first allowed us to test our interview framework (see below). Furthermore, leveraging the “snowball effect”—which involved asking these individuals to refer us to other people they considered important—allowed us to gradually compile a supplementary list of elites subjectively regarded by their peers as influential regarding the sectoral reforms under study. Thus, the application of the qualitative dimension of the programmatic approach allows us to include in the population of sectoral elites actors who may not have been part of our small sample of “long-timers” (those who have remained in positions of power for more than six years).
These semi-structured interviews were conducted using a questionnaire agreed upon by the research team. It comprised three sets of questions: (i) social background, (ii) degree of involvement in the public policy decision-making process, (iii) the reform models they championed (ideas and instruments advocated). The objective was to gather data on their personal and professional trajectories to supplement the sociobiographical profiles already compiled and to be able to reconstruct the dimensions and/or reform options around which these elites mobilized. Taking into account the historical context of their professional trajectories thus allows us to demonstrate how these elites may change or adapt their vision of the future of certain reforms in response to prevailing collective representations.