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Berna León

October 15th, 2024

Born to Rule – review

0 comments | 9 shares

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Berna León

October 15th, 2024

Born to Rule – review

0 comments | 9 shares

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

In Born to RuleSam Friedman and Aaron Reeves examine how Britain’s elite continues to reproduce itself through entrenched structures of privilege, despite the appearance of increased meritocracy and diversity. The book’s original and extensive mixed-methods approach, centring on the complete Who’s Who database, makes this one of the most important contributions to date to the study of the British elite, writes Berna León.

Sam Friedman and Aaron Reeves launched the book at a public, hybrid LSE event on Thursday 3 October – watch it back on YouTube. You can also take a look at a YouTube short, an LSE Festival exhibition poster and an LSE Research for the World feature, all based on the book’s research.

Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite. Sam Friedman and Aaron Reeves. Harvard University Press. 2024.


Born to rule cover Sam Friedman and Aaron ReevesIn Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman make a remarkable and timely contribution to our understanding of the British ruling class, showing the ways in which elite reproduction has changed (or not) in the past century, and the mechanisms that these elites use to legitimise their position. Reeves and Friedman’s central argument is that, despite the fact that there have been some changes in the diversity and rhetoric of the British elite, it continues to reproduce itself through entrenched structures that include cultural (education), social (networks) and economic (wealth) capital. As the French would say, plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose (the more things change, the more they stay the same). 

As the authors acknowledge, they are not the first to delve into the composition and behaviour of British elites: Ralph Miliband, John Scott or Anthony Sampson have all written about these “strategies of reproduction”. However, what sets apart Born to Rule from previous contributions to this area is the ambitious research strategy that Reeves and Friedman roll out, with a mixed-methods approach that combines a quantitative analysis of extensive datasets with qualitative in-depth interviews that, together, account for the objective and subjective patterns of this powerful group. On the one hand, for their quantitative analysis, they run a time-series analysis to observe whether the proportion of members of the elite that graduated from Oxbridge or Clarendon Schools, are from wealthy backgrounds, are white or men have changed over time.

Despite the faith of many in meritocratic imaginaries, Reeves and Friedman demonstrate the role that property and financial assets have in not just insulation from economic risk, but also as a resource to invest in education or networking

To gather a representative and trustworthy sample, they ingeniously refer to the British Who’s Who, a biographical directory of around 125,000 “influential” people published annually since 1897. It includes two types of elites that the authors call “positional elites” who are automatically included (such as MPs, senior judges a CEOs of Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 companies), and “reputational elites”, who are voted by the directory’s board of advisors. On the other hand, their qualitative analysis involved conducting over 200 in-depth interviews with members of the British elite (categorising them into four cohorts by age to account for variations across time). They combined this with a survey with over 15,000 of the members of the Who’s Who directory, with both sources shedding light on how these elites perceive their own status and what political views they hold.

The book is divided into three parts, each delving into a specific aspect of elite reproduction. Part One: Aristocratic to Ordinary looks at the ways in which the elite has transformed its identity in order to adapt to changing societal expectations and attitudes. In this first part, Reeves and Friedman delve into the conceptual considerations of the thesis, defining key notions such as what we mean when we speak of “elites” or “social closure”, the formal and informal barriers that they establish to access this field of power. Later, in Chapter Two, they analyse how elites self-present their trajectories, downplaying their privileges under a meritocratic narrative. In the last chapter of this section, they mobilise the notion of cultural omnivorousness to trace the strategies of distinction of contemporary elites, who – nowadays – do not reject popular culture (as they had traditionally done) but master instead both highbrow and popular tastes, giving them the capacity to navigate and expand their social capital in different spaces.

Chapter Eight in particular is interesting as a window into the tensions that women in the elite face, negotiating the reality of having more opportunities than disadvantaged women but at the same time facing important subtle barriers or double standards.

Then in Part Two: How to Make an Elite, they focus on the strategies and mechanisms that these elites mobilise to “pass down” their position to their scions. The first chapter of this part looks at the central role that family wealth – and, in particular, very generous inheritances – has in elite reproduction. Despite the faith of many in meritocratic imaginaries, Reeves and Friedman demonstrate the role that property and financial assets have in not just insulation from economic risk, but also as a resource to invest in education or networking (what Bourdieu called “convertibility rates” between forms of capital). In this vein, the next two chapters look at the academic field: Chapter Five focuses on the role that the Clarendon schools (which include, among others, schools like Eton, Harrow or Westminster) have as gateways to elite status through the concentration of social capital, while Chapter Six explores the role of Oxbridge as not just the constitution of elite networks that we have just mentioned, but also as a “social training ground” where students integrate the habitus (ie, the set of internalised dispositions that guide the actions of individuals) of the elite in societies like the Oxford Union.

Born to Rule represents one of the most important contributions to date to the study of the British elite, and more than that – by virtue of its empirical design – to the broader research agenda of elite composition and reproduction

Finally, Part Three: Why Elite Reproduction Matters delves into the ideology of this power elite, and the ways in which these views rationalise not only economic inequality, but also gender and racial ones. Its first chapter focuses on the ideologies of the elite, where the belief of these elite members in meritocracy is shown – despite the overwhelming evidence against it – as genuine. This belief explains to a certain extent the cognitive dissonance that the authors identify among the elite, whereby they express concern with inequalities while opposing policies that could structurally mitigate it, such as a more progressive taxation to finance a broader Welfare State. The final two chapters close with an analysis of how gender and race lead to an exclusion by different mechanisms, like the informal male clubs where networks are built to progress professionally. Chapter Eight in particular is interesting as a window into the tensions that women in the elite face, negotiating the reality of having more opportunities than disadvantaged women but at the same time facing important subtle barriers or double standards. By the same token, the ingrained structural racism that governs the field of power sets similar – and sometimes harsher – informal barriers to Black and Asian individuals, explored in the final chapter. While these experiences can sometimes lead some of these women and racialised individuals to more progressive positions, in other instances they can also exacerbate the belief in meritocracy. This last political divergence warrants more research on the factors that push those elites with “dominant-but-dominated” trajectories towards more redistributive preferences, or instead deepen the belief in individualistic ideologies.

All in all, Born to Rule represents one of the most important contributions to date to the study of the British elite, and more than that – by virtue of its empirical design – to the broader research agenda of elite composition and reproduction. Any reader interested in the increasing gap between the wealthiest fraction of British society and the working and middle classes will find a stimulating reading that ultimately calls for a reform of education (expanding the funding for higher education and eliminating legacy admissions), broadening the access to social capital and, above all, taking seriously inheritance and wealth taxes to reverse the concentration of wealth in an increasingly smaller elite circle. Because, as the authors evidence through the depth and breadth of their research into elite reproduction and the structures that enable it, inequality is, ultimately, a political decision. 


Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Image: MK Jones on Shutterstock.

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About the author

Berna Leon

Berna León

Berna León is a Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Department of Government and a PhD candidate at Sciences Po Paris.  

Posted In: Book Reviews | Britain and Ireland | British Politics | Economics | LSE Book | LSE Event | Sociology/Anthropology

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