CEPEL

Methodology

The empirical data presented in the database are taken from the OPERA research program (Operationalizing Programmatic Elites Research in America 1988-2010). This study, carried out by William Genieys, was funded by the French National Research Agency (€250,000) and took place from 2008 to 2012 (OPERA: ANR-08-BLAN-0032). The empirical survey concerns the transformation of the highest level of US governing structures in the health and defense sectors.

The fieldwork was carried out by a team of senior and junior researchers. The senior team was composed of Jean Joana (Professor, University of Montpellier 1), Saïd Darviche, Marc Smyrl (Associate Professor, Montpellier 1), Sébastien Guignier (IEP of Bordeaux), as well as William Genieys (Research Professor, CNRS). The junior team was composed, on the one hand, of two post-docs hired by CEPEL-UM1, Ben Jensen (American University) and Catherine Hoeffler (Science Po Paris), and, on the other hand, by two Ph.D students, Anne-Laure Beaussier and Ulrike Lepont.
The empirical data concerning US elites collected through this fieldwork are of two different but complementary kinds. On the one hand, they consist of a socio-biographical database on the positional elites studied, and, on the other hand, of a large number of interviews carried out in Washington DC, for the most part by the junior team researchers.

The production and summary of empirical data should be considered in the context of the development of the programmatic approach. This method has been developed with the purpose of analyzing the role of actor groups or elites in formulating reforms in public policies in Europe (Genieys, Smyrl, 2008; Genieys 2010). Expressed in its first version for the study of the transformation of the highest levels of the French social state, it has been recently reviewed by Genieys and Hassenteufel (2012), in order to apply it to other cases. It has been used and readjusted here according to the US system of checks and balances (i.e., Congress and executive branches) with the aim of assessing the elite configurations of decision-making for health and defense policies.

The programmatic approach is based on two distinct but convergent empirical research paradigms (See the characteristics of the programmatic approach in the table below):

1) A quantitative paradigm: the longitudinal sociographic study (i.e. more than 20 years) of a sample of actors characterized by the period in position(s) of power;

2) A qualitative paradigm: in-depth interviews secured by a “snowball effect” with key informants, who are known for having an important role in decision making or in formulating reforms in a chosen field of public policy, who, in return, recommend a list of actors to interview among the decision-making positions remaining for our research.

The first step of the programmatic approach is devoted to the longitudinal sociographic study, over a period of ten to twenty years, over which “positional elites” will be understood. For the OPERA investigation on the US case, we retained the period from 1988 to 2010. This timeframe aims to take into account a significant period to measure the continuity of elite careers in senior executive and Congressional areas, by taking into consideration the effect of shifting majorities. We have therefore analyzed three Republican and three Democratic administrations. This covers the period from the 100th to the 111th Congresses. Congress, twelve legislative terms in all, during five of which the president had a majority in both houses: Clinton during the 103rd, Bush Jr. during the 107th, 108th, and 109th, and Obama for the 111th.

From this, we first identified a population of more than 3,000 actors in the highest positions of power (i.e., senior appointees of the executive branch and congressional staffers from 1988 to 2010 in the health and defense sectors). Subsequently, we deliberately delimited the field of study to two huge areas of public action, restricting it to the decision-making positions of two political fields: the expansion of health policies (i.e., from Clinton to Obama) and the "revolution in military affairs," in other words, Rumsfeld's reforms on the shape of American armies.

The first list of positions has been established with the Congressional Directories, available on the Lexis Nexis database.

http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/browse/collection.action?collectionCode=CDIR:

(i) For the legislative area: staffers have been selected from the defense and health committees and subcommittees.

(ii) For the executive area, we have considered in each sector: cabinet members working on defense and health public policies, the secretaries up to 5 hierarchical levels below, agency directors, and relevant general military staff. Among our executive staff, the Senate must confirm nominees: (a) The 15 secretaries of cabinet agencies, deputy secretaries, and general counsel agencies (b) The director positions in regulatory agencies (c) General military staff.

We have in turn reduced our initial population from 2,263 "positional" actors identified by introducing a control variable: we selected, in our sociographic study, only those people who have occupied the identified position for at least 6 years over the period 1988 to 2010. In this way, we have obtained a reduced population of 399 people (funnel effect).

Within this new group of 399 people, we have carried out socio-biographical research on each person to constitute the OPERA Data Base, on which we have then carried out a sociographic analysis (see Chapter 2 supra). Thus, we have established a biography from combining information found on: 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, and OpenSecrets.org.

We have subsequently produced some answers to the following questions in individual short notes: to what extent is the population feminized? For individuals, what is their level of qualification, university attended, initial job? What is specific about their career in power institutions? How long is their average career? Are they subject to specific flexibilities? What kind of job will they take after their activities in government? Can we draw up a typology of their institutional careers?

The second empirical element of the programmatic approach follows a qualitative logic. This study aims to capture the role played in practice by some of the studied elites in the formulation of sectoral reforms in public policy. This allows a reconstruction of the trajectories of elite individuals and the policy-relevant ideas they bear through the selected policy sectors. The purpose of this is to assess their degree of involvement in the reform process studied. In-depth interviews allow for an assessment of the empirical reality of this phenomenon.
To avoid reproducing the defects of the "positional" approach to elites (i.e., we know that they occupy positions of power, but we do not know if/how and to what end they employ them), the programmatic approach recommends reducing elite samples to those who are reputed to be influential on political reforms. We have tested this approach through exploratory interviews, assessing the relevance of selected elites' positions and the power and influence of those who occupied them. Interviews were conducted with 'key informants' selected in the public and private sectors according to their reputation.
This first series of in-depth interviews with chosen elites based on criteria of reputation, and not necessarily on being in our initial sample, allowed us to test our interview framework (see below). Furthermore, the mobilization of the 'snowball effect', which consists of asking people to suggest other important people from their point of view, enabled us to gradually establish a complementary list of elites, considered by their peers as influential on the studied sector reforms. From this point on, pursuing the qualitative dimension of the programmatic approach enabled us to incorporate actors who could not be part of our reduced sample of "long-timers" (those who remained in positions of power for more than six years) among the sector elite population.

These semi-structured interviews were conducted following a common script used by all researchers. It included three blocks of questions: (i) social background (ii) the degree of involvement in public decision-making processes on public policies (iii) elements of reform on which they have been mobilized (ideas and tools defended). The objective was to collect data on their personal and professional trajectories, thus fleshing out the existing sociographic files so as to better reconstruct the reform options around which particular elites mobilized. Taking into account the historicity of professional trajectories allows us to see whether and to what extent these elite individuals change and adapt their view of the fate of certain reforms as a result of evolving collective understanding of these.