Leadership and the structure of elite connections

I found this chapter very interesting, and it was interesting to examine the community that I am in and to see the similarities between the communities in little old St. George and big city Chicago. What got my attention most of all was inter-institutional connections shown in figure 14.2 on page 341. (hopefully my description will jog your mind on which diagram it is) What I found interesting was that the way that the web diagram was set up with different parts of the community and such as: Law, education, politics, religion, community organizations, and so on. The diagram shows these different parts of the community and they are connected to arrows (which are proportional to the volume of the inter-institutional connections) What jumps off the page in the diagram is that all arrows point to politics and the volume of those connections compared to the non political connections, its almost not even comparable.
I guess another way of looking at this diagram is who relies on who to get things accomplished in the community.  It has also made me think back to 2008 and the presidential campaign for President Obama who rose to power through being a community organizer. Looking at figure 14.2, the 2 areas with the most connections by far were politics and community organizations. Those leaders in those organizations most certainly have power for either good or bad. Heck, one of them made it to be the leader of the free world.
My opinion is that in every community there are those that are leaders and there are those that are members of call it whatever you will: the good ol boys club, the social elite, business elite, cliques... and so on. Point is, those groups exist. I have the opinion that those groups exist for various reasons. Some people want to accomplish personal gain, and then some people want to build something, do something great in life and make the world a little better along the way. (that is the somewhat naive idealist in me talking) relationships and friendships are formed by people who are just looking for connections for further personal gain and potential power. Relationships are formed by powerful people I think because not many of those people became successful by themselves, It takes collaboration and teamwork to be successful and when they are looking for connections, people are generally attracted to like minded people or people with similar attributes.

Research for my project is going well, I decided on the topic of globalization, I find it to be a very interesting topic and understanding it could be very beneficial for me in my choice of career. I decided to read The Lexus and the Olive Tree again by Thomas Friedman again because it uses some very good real life examples of how Globalization has influenced our world. Also, the first time I read it it was in Spanish so I figure that maybe I will pick up on something that I may have missed the first time I read through it.