This paper is one of the most gratifying I ever have written because it represents the culmination of my dogged eVort to show critics of classdominance theory exactly how the corporate rich dominate the federal government in the United States. The four-process model I was trying out here later gained widespread acceptance when it was eshed out in The Powers That Be (1979), a book that went on to be one of the top 50 best sellers in sociology since World War II according to a study by Gans (1997). This paper wasn’t the rst time the Insurgent Sociologist provided a useful forum for me, nor was it the last, but it was the one where the existence of an alternative journal turned out to be the most helpful. Although the paper was aimed at the pluralists, who may not be recognized by the younger generation as the main rivals to a class-dominance view in those days, the model proved to be just as useful in the arguments that arose with the state autonomy theorists shortly after the paper appeared. For example, building on original research by historian Laurence Shoup on the role of the Council on Foreign Relations in shaping post-World War II foreign policy, which rst appeared in the Insurgent Sociologist (Shoup 1975; Shoup 1977), I was able to refute the claims of political scientist Stephen Krasner (1978) on the alleged role of autonomous state elites, infused with “Wilsonian internationalism” and anti-Communism, in making the postwar foreign policy decisions that eventually led to the Vietnam War (DomhoV 1990, chapter 5). Today there are few social scientists who would deny that a foreign policy “establishment” rooted in the policy-planning network shapes American foreign policy. Even more satisfying, the four-process model made it possible to do original archival research on the origins of the Agricultural Adjustment Act (1933) and Social Security Act (1935) that shows just how wrong Skocpol (1980), Finegold and Skocpol (1995), OrloV (1993), and Amenta (1998) turned out to be on the New Deal because they rely exclusively
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