There is a rising global elite, but (yet) without a common goal

Are people like Jeff Bezos from Amazon, Sheryl Sandberg from Facebook and Jack Ma from Alibaba part of a global power elite who make decisions about our future world? Diliara Valeeva analysed 200 million corporations and observes a rising group of business leaders who are internationally connected and can be influential at the global level. But, she states, they are likely to represent their nation-state interests rather than a coherent global elite interest. 'There is no one global elite yet with a strongly determined common interest.' Wednesday 10 November Valeeva will defend her PhD thesis at the University of Amsterdam. Recently, some critics, and conspiracy theorists alike, have been arguing that people like Bezos, Sandberg and Ma could be part of the so-called 'global power elite'. This 'global power elite' is often imagined as a group of global leaders who once in a while meet and make decisions about the future of the world. 'These kinds of speculations, that are often not based on empirical evidence, began to take place in public discussion for two reasons', states political scientist Diliara Valeeva who studied business elites. 'First, we observed enormous levels of wealth inequality between rich and poor during the last few decades, and second there has been a rise and success of populist leaders like Trump or Bolsonaro who presented themselves as anti-elitist, even though they were not.' Analysing 200 million corporations