Varieties of Economic Elites? Preliminary Results From the World Elite Database (WED)

Abstract

The strategies, decisions and beliefs of those who occupy prominent positions of economic power have influence on very large corporations and the markets they dominate, on vast amounts of economic resources, and on the rules of the game. However, the sociology of elites faces a dual challenge: divergent conceptualisations of what can be considered as a position of economic power and internationally incompatible sources of information hinder comparative analysis. The World Elite Database (WED) addresses this dual challenge, by generating, based on a consistent definition, standardised data for 16 countries. This research note introduces WED, its construction principles, and presents preliminary findings on how economic elites differ across countries.

Publication DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.13203
Funding Information: This research was partly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) through Standard Grant ‘Taxing the Super‐Rich’ (ES/W012650/1). The ‘Open Elite Data project’ funded by SwissUniversities co‐financed the kick‐off meeting of the WED project
Additional Information: Copyright © 2025 The Author(s). The British Journal of Sociology published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of London School of Economics and Political Science. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Publication ISSN: 1468-4446
Last Modified: 01 May 2025 08:43
Date Deposited: 09 Apr 2025 11:53
Full Text Link:
Related URLs: https://onlinel ... 1468-4446.13203 (Publisher URL)
http://www.scop ... tnerID=8YFLogxK (Scopus URL)
PURE Output Type: Article
Published Date: 2025-03-27
Published Online Date: 2025-03-27
Accepted Date: 2025-02-28
Authors: Bühlmann, Felix
Christesen, Caroline Ahler
Cousin, Bruno
Denord, François
Ellersgaard, Christoph Houman
Lagneau‐Ymonet, Paul
Larsen, Anton Grau
Savage, Mike
Thine, Sylvain
Young, Kevin
Araujo, Pedro
Arrigoni, Paola
Atria, Jorge
Benz, Pierre
Behr, Johanna
Botelho, Maria do Carmo
Butt, Asif
Casanova, Pedro
Clemente‐Casinhas, Luís
Castellani, Ana
Cescon, Fabio
Dagnes, Joselle
Debska, Hanna
Delval, Anne‐Sophie
Dragun, Vitalina
Egas, Andreia
Emilsson, Kajsa
Fan, Xiaoguang
Fu, Fan
Gentile, Julia
Gomes, Orlando
Gronwald, Victoria
Heredia, Mariana
Hjellbrekke, Johannes
Honório, Jorge
Huang, Jie
Inkley, Johnathan
Johansson, Håkan
Koiranen, Ilkka
Koivula, Aki
Kuusela, Hanna
Levita, Gabriel
Ling, Chao
Lu, Peng
Lukas, Michael
Lunding, Jacob
Mahmoudzadeh, Mina
McQuade, Sean
Méndez, María Luisa
Nunes, Nuno
O'Brien, Shay
Otero, Gabriel
Pagnini, Marta
Pelfini, Alejandro
Pereira, Jéssica
Roa, Catalina
Rossier, Thierry
Saga, Marte Lund
Santana, Dulce
Schneickert, Christian
Schimpfössl, Elisabeth (ORCID Profile 0000-0002-6168-7411)
Schoenberger, François
Solipa, Izaura
Trembaczowski, Łukasz
Toft, Maren
Vale, Sofia
Vasconcelos, Pedro
Velazco, Jorge Quesada
Warczok, Tomasz
Yu, Xinguo

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