Elite Studies: for a new approach

After a period in which interest in elites among social scientists went into decline, elite studies are now reviving. But it is important to understand why the decline occurred. We critically examine the largely contradictory explanations put forward by Scott and Savage and their related proposals for new research. We suggest an alternative approach that, we believe, would prove more rewarding. This entails treating elites quite extensively, but understood as small-N entities, clearly distinct from social classes. On this basis, elites can be characterised through prosopographical methods – the construction of collective biographies of their members. More reliable accounts can thus be produced of the social composition of different elites and in turn questions addressed of how far skewness in their recruitment results from the processes through which they are formally constituted and how far from the composition of the ‘pools’ from which their recruitment primarily occurs. Further questions follow of the implications not only for equality of opportunity but also for the wastage of talent and loss of diversity in elite memberships and for the so far neglected issue of the quality and the effectiveness of elites in whatever field they exist