Illusions of power: interviewing local elites

It has always been difficult to explore local power structures, and local p olitics (or local political economies) have often been reinterpreted in way s in which they are simply seen as the working out of wider national or glo bal processes. The recognition that this is not enough has encouraged a gro wth in more locally focused research, frequently involving extensive interv iewing of members of local business and political elites. Two key sets of q uestions arise from this sort of research. The first concerns the relations hips between researcher and researched which are constructed by the researc h process itself. Is it possible to maintain an attitude of critical engage ment? How is the research agenda constructed through negotiation between th e participants? Who has power within the research process? The second invol ves a more serious issue for this form of research: namely, is it really po ssible to identify and explore power through interviews, however carefully constructed they are? What about the dimensions of power that are inaccessi ble to interviewers? This question has bedevilled community-power and plura list research in the USA and the United Kingdom, and has never been adequat ely resolved. Do we now have the means to resolve it? The author explores b oth of these sets of questions with the help of evidence from a range of re search projects in which he has been actively involved. The conclusion sugg ests productive approaches to the researching of local elites, identifying opportunities as well as constraints.