Making the Managerial Elite: Conservative class politics after James Burnham

This paper examines the evolution of James Burnham’s theory of the managerial elite within American conservative thought from the mid-twentieth century to the present. Drawing on a conceptual history approach, it traces how Burnham’s framework was reinterpreted across three pivotal political eras: the New Deal, the Cold War, and the neoliberal order. Conservative factions appropriated or contested managerialism in divergent ways: neoconservatives framed it as a rationale for executive technocracy; paleoconservatives saw it as a betrayal of constitutional limits; and contemporary populists repurposed it into an anti-globalist critique. Rather than treating managerialism as a static theory, the paper interprets it as a volatile political concept, one that registers deeper tensions in conservative visions of legitimacy, sovereignty, and capitalist transformation. In doing so, it contributes to a broader understanding of how concepts of class and authority are rearticulated across shifting regimes of power.