Mirroring the Masses? A Cross-National Comparison of Civil Society Elite Composition

This chapter explores the composition of civil society elites and to what extent this differs from the general population, what we call the ‘civil society elite-masses gap’. While the civil society elites are, from a normative point of view, expected to be representative of the general population in terms of their social composition and attitudes, professionalisation and elitisation of civil society might lead to exclusive patterns of social composition of the top-level leadership strata of civil society organisations. This chapter presents an analysis of novel comparative survey data targeting the top-level leaders of the most resource-rich civil society organisations in five European contexts. The results show that there are striking similarities in terms of attitudes among civil society elites across different civil society regimes that are distinct from general populations. The civil society elite-masses gap in terms of sociodemographic backgrounds is also evident, but the pattern varies across contexts.