Zrod a další vývoj nových elit v České republice (od konce osmdesátých let 20. století do jara 2002)

The study summarizes the results of the authors’ nearly decade-long effort (related to the
study of the post-socialist transformation of Czech society) to gain an empirical and theoretical
knowledge of the process of how social elites are created and consolidated. Social
elites are understood primarily as the foremost stratification groupings, which enter into
complicated interactions with the social system, its economic and political institutional
structures, as well as the sphere of culture and its structures. They include political-administrative,
economic, and cultural-ideological elites. By re-telling the history of the creation and
development of these three elites between 1989 and 2002 (including a brief overview concerning
the origin of the post-socialist elites during the period of state-run socialism), and
through a systematic presentation of the authors’ own findings and other resources, the
authors have created a foundation which provides the basis for the testing of the main current
theories pertaining to the history and internal structuring of elites (Szelényi et al. and
Higley et al.). The main conclusion is that the schemes resulting from these theories may be
used for interpretation and, by extrapolating the features common to the post-socialist experience,
these theories may be used as a basis for ideal-type models capturing a diverse social
reality. The schemes generated from these theories, however, may not be used to predict
future developments.