In an Age of Experts : The Changing Roles of Professionals in Politics and Public Life

Since the 1960s, the number of highly educated professionals in America has grown dramatically. During this time, scholars and journalists have described the group as exercising increasing influence over cultural values and public affairs. The rise of this "new class" has been greeted with idealistic hope or ideological suspicion on both the right and the left. This study challenges these characterizations, showing how claims about the distinctive politics and values of the professional stratum have been overstated, and that the political preferences of professionals are much more closely linked to those of business owners and executives than has been commonly assumed. Drawing on extensive empirical and historical research, the author argues that the professions have splintered along demographic and economic fault lines and have, thereby, lost most of their political force. In addition, the old model of professionals as social trustees whose work contributes first and foremost to the social good has given way to an increasingly exclusive emphasis on market-oriented technical expertise. Brint concludes that this movement away from "social trustee professionalism" toward an "expert professionalism" tends to weaken the fabric of American democracy.