although 'the establishment' (I prefer the term power elite) has tremendous input into shaping mainstream thought and actions on a multiplicity of levels via systemic control. Just because a person is within 'the mainstream', in no way, shape, or form means that they are also a member of the 'the establishment' aka the power elite.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Establishment
The establishment is a term used to describe a dominant group or elite that controls a polity or an organization. It may comprise a closed social group that selects its own members, or entrenched élite structures in specific institutions. One can refer to any relatively small class or group of people who can exercise control as The Establishment.
Conversely, in the jargon of sociology, anyone who does not belong to The Establishment may be labelled an "outsider" (as opposed to an "insider" ). Anti-authoritarian and anti-establishment ideologies question the legitimacy of establishments, even seeing their influence on society as anti-democratic.
The term in its modern sense was popularized by the British journalist Henry Fairlie, who in September 1955 in the London magazine The Spectator defined the network of prominent, well-connected people as "the Establishment". He wrote::
By the Establishment, I do not only mean the centres of official power—though they are certainly part of it—but rather the whole matrix of official and social relations within which power is exercised. The exercise of power in the United Kingdom (more specifically, in England) cannot be understood unless it is recognized that it is exercised socially.
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United States
Experts talk about what C. Wright Mills called the "power elite", and about leadership communities in policy areas such as foreign policy. Many of these families often have ties to older East Coast cities such as Boston, New York City, Philadelphia and Newport, Rhode Island. One such group of interconnected elite families is the Boston Brahmins. Many in the East Coast establishment have ties to Ivy League colleges and to prep schools in New England and the Northeast.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_theory
In political science and sociology, elite theory is a theory of the state that seeks to describe and explain power relationships in contemporary society. The theory posits that a small minority, consisting of members of the economic elite and policy-planning networks, holds the most power—and that this power is independent of democratic elections.
Through positions in corporations or on corporate boards, and influence over policy-planning networks through financial support of foundations or positions with think tanks or policy-discussion groups, members of the "elite" exert significant power over corporate and government decisions.
The basic characteristics of this theory are that power is concentrated, the elites are unified, the non-elites are diverse and powerless, elites' interests are unified due to common backgrounds and positions and the defining characteristic of power is institutional position. Elite theory opposes pluralism (more than one system of power), a tradition that emphasized how multiple major social groups and interests have influence upon and various forms of representation within more powerful sets of rulers, contributing to decently representative political outcomes that reflect the collective needs of a society.
C. Wright Mills
Mills published his book
The Power Elite in 1956, in which he claimed to present a new sociological perspective on systems of power in the United States.
He identified a triumvirate of power groups—political, economic and military—which form a distinguishable, although not unified, power-wielding body in the United States.
Mills proposed that this group had been generated through a process of rationalization at work in all advanced industrial societies whereby the mechanisms of power became concentrated, funnelling overall control into the hands of a limited, somewhat corrupt group. This reflected a decline in politics as an arena for debate and relegation to a merely formal level of discourse. This macro-scale analysis sought to point out the degradation of democracy in "advanced" societies and the fact that power generally lies outside the boundaries of elected representatives.
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Thomas Ferguson
The political scientist Thomas Ferguson's Investment Theory of Party Competition can be thought of as an elite theory. Set out most extensively in his 1995 book Golden Rule: The Investment Theory of Party Competition and the Logic of Money-driven Political Systems, the theory
begins by noting that in modern political systems the cost of acquiring political awareness is so great that no citizen can afford it. As a consequence, these systems tend be dominated by those who can, most typically elites and corporations. These elites then seek to influence politics by 'investing' in the parties or policies they support through political contributions and other means such as endorsements in the media.
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