Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite

With Sam Friedman

The Organizations, Markets and Governance research group at Department of Organization, CBS, The Danish Sociological Association and The Danish Society for the study of Elites and Power have invited professor at the London School of Economics and Political Science Sam Friedman to give a talk about his groundbreaking book Born to Rule - The Making and Remaking of the British Elite (together with Aaron Reeves)

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 talk, based on his new co-authored book (with Aaron Reeves), Born to Rule, Sam Friedman combs 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 Friedman and Reeves 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 they 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; they 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. Born to Rule shows that the family you are born into, and the schools you attend, leave a profound mark on the exercise of power.