Comprador elite is a person who acts as an agent for foreign organizations engaged in investment, trade, or economic or political exploitation. Comprador Elite are senior corporate managers who derive their position and status from connection to foreign corporations. Comprador elite is a term used in critical theories of the sociology of development to imply that a foreign-allied national business class tends to encourage local economic development that benefits other nations rather than their own. Comprador Elite and Corporate Elite play an important role in corporate culture. Comprador is a Spanish word used to denote a local overlord appointed by the empire to rule a colony.
Canada's real rulers are comprador elite. A comprador elite is a native manager of European business houses in East and South East Asia, and, by extension, comprador social groups that play broadly similar roles in other parts of the world. Comprador elite class is a term for the natives of a colonized land that are "bought" by the colonizers.
The term 'comprador elite class' has been defined as relatively privileged, wealthy and educated elite, introduced by colonial domination, and who may therefore be less inclined to struggle for local cultural and political independence. Allan Gotlieb is a major member of Canada's comprador elite. As ambassador to Washington under the comprador and former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney.
As capital reconstitutes itself, as traditionally secure factory work is replaced by the feckless insecurity of McJob, as the disadvantaged are cast about in the icy wind of world commodity price fluctuations, as the comprador elite expands its powerbase in the financial precincts of the postmodern necropolis, and as the White House redecorates itself in the form-fits-function architecture of neo-liberalism, capitalist hegemony digs its bony talons into the structure of subjectivity itself.
Much of the recent evisceration of social programs and the vicious assaults against trade unions by the neo-liberal comprador elite can be traced to the 1980s, when the capitalist class was given a dose of corporate Viagra through massive deregulation policies. The state is captive to the interests of both the former colonial master and the local landlord-comprador elite.
As long as the state remains subservient to the interests of the US and the local landlord-comprador elite, it can never be expected to assert its sovereign will to protect national interests, much less the interests of the majority of people who are the end victims of globalization and internal inequities persisting in neo-colonies like the Philippines.
Comprador elite class is an important concept in the neocolonial dependence model. It reflects a specific way to force the country to fulfill the demands of capital of rich countries. This unequal relationship between the centre or the developed countries, and the periphery Policies of the USA and EU countries are based on support of a small, but powerful elite or comprador elite.
The comprador elite class is consisted of people with strong ties to the West such as export industry owners, financial traders, military and top civil bureaucrats, and professionals with better employment prospects in foreign corporations, such as programmers. Such people often keep their financial assets in Western banks, there families live in Western capitals and their children typically get an education in prestigious Western universities. There is a convergence of the interests of comprador elite with the interests of financial and industrial elite of developed nations.