Is an elite consolidating among the leadership of community-based organizations (CBOs) in U.S. cities? Ethnographers identify a privatized turn in urban governance, with some nonprofit civic leaders becoming a cohesive group with enormous influence in local affairs. However, while researchers propose elite consolidation has occurred and created a more hierarchical, technocratic, and unipolar civic field, these structural changes have not been directly assessed. In this paper, I reintroduce an interorganizational network perspective to elite consolidation and evaluate how interlocking directorates among CBOs in Cleveland, OH, and Austin, TX constitute relationships among civic leaders over twenty years. Results indicate boards of directors are constituting a new civic elite, and that hierarchical interlock tendencies doubled in both cities between 1998 and 2016. The core of the networks appear to be organizations traditionally important in urban governance, though, and community analysis reveals power sharing among elite groups in the cities rather than singular dominant communities, indicating as situation of "elitist pluralism." These findings offer a new perspective on the problem of elite consolidation in civil society, and offer a benchmark for future analysis of civic elites.

精英阶层是否正在美国城市的社区组织（CBO）领导层中巩固？民族志学家认为城市治理已发生私有化转变，一些非营利性民间领导人成为在地方事务中具有巨大影响力的凝聚力团体。但是，尽管研究人员提出精英合并已经发生，并创建了一个更分层，更专制和单极的公民领域，但这些结构性变化尚未得到直接评估。在本文中，我重新介绍了组织间网络的观点，以进行精英合并，并评估了二十年来，俄亥俄州克利夫兰和德克萨斯州奥斯汀市的CBO之间的相互联系的董事会如何构成公民领导者之间的关系。结果表明，董事会正在构成新的公民精英，而且，在1998年至2016年之间，这两个城市的等级联锁趋势翻了一番。尽管如此，网络的核心似乎是传统上对城市治理至关重要的组织，而社区分析显示，城市精英群体之间的权力共享，而不是单一的优势社区，这表明作为“精英多元主义”的情况。这些发现为公民社会中的精英合并问题提供了新的视角，并为未来的公民精英分析提供了基准。