Developing an Elite Formation Index for Comparative Elite Studies: The Schooling of Irish and UK Cabinet Ministers

Authors

Brendan O'Rourke, Technological University DublinFollow
John Hogan, Technological University DublinFollow
Paul Donnelly, Technological University DublinFollow

Document Type

Article

Rights

Available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 4.0 International Licence

Disciplines

5.3 EDUCATIONAL SCIENCES, 5.4 SOCIOLOGY, 5.6 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Publication Details

Politics

Abstract

Elites and their formation have become a matter of increasing public concern and research interest in recent years. The lessons from such research can be made more generalisable if a measure of elite formation could be developed that is comparable across different elite formation systems, whether they differ by elite, time or country. But, the nature of elite formation renders this a complex task. Nevertheless, in this article, by building upon measures employed in other fields such as industrial economics, indices are constructed that facilitate the comparison of elite formation systems. This is illustrated through a comparison of the schooling of Irish and British cabinet ministers.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.21427/D7C50B

Recommended Citation

O’Rourke, B., Hogan, J. and Donnelly, P. (2015) Developing an Elite Formation Index for Comparative Elite Studies: The Schooling of Irish and UK Cabinet Ministers. Politics, 35(1): 3–18. DOI: 10.1111/1467-9256.12071