Varieties of Economic Elites? Preliminary Results From the World Elite Database (WED)
: Bühlmann, Felix; Ahler-Christesen, Caroline; Cousin, Bruno; Denord, François; Houman-Ellersgaard, Christoph; Lagneau‐Ymonet Paul; Gray-Larsen, Anton; Savage, Mike; Thine, Sylvain; Young, Kevin; Araujo, Pedro; Arrigoni, Paola; Atria, Jorge; Benz, Pierre; Behr, Johanna; do Carmo-Botelho, Maria; 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; Marte-Lund, Saga; Santana, Dulce; Schneickert, Christian; Schimpfössl, Elisabeth; Schoenberger, François; Solipa, Izaura; Trembaczowski, Łukasz; Toft, Maren; Vale, Sofia; Vasconcelos, Pedro; Quesada-Velazco, Jorge; Warczok, Tomasz; Yu, Xinguo
Publisher: Wiley
: HOBOKEN
: 2025
: British Journal of Sociology
: The British Journal of Sociology
: BRIT J SOCIOL
: 11
: 0007-1315
: 1468-4446
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.13203
: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.13203
: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/491566764
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.
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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 with funds from the Centre National pour la Recherche Scientifique IEA grant ‘Comparing national power structures. A proof of concept of the World Elite Database (WED), based on France and Norway’. Throughout the 2022–2023 academic year, at the International Inequalities Institute of the London School of Economics and Political Science, Paul Lagneau-Ymonet was supported by the Leverhulme Trust, as part of its visiting professorship programme. Hanna Kuusela's research was funded by the Academy of Finland (323488).
