Born to Rule: the making and remaking of the British elite

Think of the British elite and familiar caricatures spring to mind. But are today’s power brokers a conservative chumocracy, born to privilege and anointed at Eton and Oxford? Or is a new progressive elite emerging with different values and political instincts? In this project, culminating in our recent book, Born to Rule , we comb through a trove of data in search of an answer, looking at the profiles, interests, and careers of over 125,000 members of the British elite from the late 1890s to today.  

At the heart of the study is the historical database of Who’s Who, but we also mined genealogical records, combed through probate data, and interviewed over 200 leading figures from a wide range of backgrounds and professions to uncover who runs Britain, how they think, and what they want. What we found is that there is less movement at the top than we think. Yes, there has been some progress on including women and Black and Asian Brits, but those born into the top 1% are almost just as likely to get into the elite today as they were 125 years ago.  

What has changed is how elites present themselves. Today’s elite pedal hard to convince us they are perfectly ordinary – in the way they tell their back story, express their cultural taste, or articulate their meritocratic legitimacy. And this is logical; we show that there is a strong symbolic market for ordinariness among the British public.  

Why should we care? Because the elites we have affect the politics we get. We show that the family you are born into, and the schools you attend, leave a profound mark on the exercise of power. 

Highlights:

Winner of the 2024 Mary Douglas Book Prize from the American Sociological Association (Sociology of Culture)
The Economist, Best Books of 2024
The Times, Best Books of 2024

Professor Aaron Reeves, Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, London School of Economics

Professor Sam Friedman, Professor of Sociology, Department of Sociology, London School of Economics

Born to Rule: the making and remaking of the British elite. Belknap: Harvard University Press.

Bortun, V., Reeves, A., & Friedman, S. (2024). ‘We Didn’t Know What We Were Eating Tomorrow’: How Class Origin Shapes the Political Outlook of Members of the Parliament in Britain. Political Studies

Higgins, K., Friedman, S., & Reeves, A. (2024). “Outsiders on the inside”: how minoritised elites respond to racial inequality. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 1–21.

Friedman, S., Ellersgaard, C., Reeves, A., Larsen, A. (2023) ‘The Meaning of Merit: Talent versus Hard work Legitimacy’, Social Forces

Worth, E. Reeves, A., Friedman, S. (2022) Is there an old girls’ network? Girls’ schools and recruitment to the British elite, British Journal of Sociology of Education

Friedman, S. and Reeves, A. (2020) ‘From Aristocratic to Ordinary: Shifting Modes of Elite Distinction’ American Sociological Review

Reeves, A., Friedman, S., Rahal, C., Flemmen, (2017) 'The Decline and Persistence of the Old Boy: Private Schools and Elite Recruitment 1897-2016', American Sociological Review 82 (6) 1139-1167

Born to Rule: the making and remaking of the British elite

A uniquely data-rich analysis of the British elite from the Victorian era to today: who gets in, how they get there, what they like and look like, where they go to school, and what politics they perpetuate.

Team

Publications

Wealth, Elites and Tax Justice Find out more about the research theme headed by Professor Mike Savage