World Elite Database

The World Elite Database (WED) is a cooperative data and analysis project led by researchers on elite populations across the world.

WED is an international consortium of scholars from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark, Italy, France, Finland, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the UK and the USA. These teams work together to develop a new standardised data regime to study, and share data about elites. The UK team is based at the International Inequalities Institute at LSE.

Its aim is to solve the problem of comparability and heterogeneity in the study of national power structures, and to foster a cooperative community of scholars interested in studying elite populations systematically.