Thierry Rossier

The strategies, decisions and beliefs of those who occupy prominent positions of economic power have influence on very large corporations and the markets they dominate, on vast amounts of economic resources, and on the rules of the game. However, the sociology of elites faces a dual challenge: divergent conceptualisations of what can be considered as a position of economic power and internationally incompatible sources of information hinder comparative analysis. The World Elite Database (WED) addresses this dual challenge, by generating, based on a consistent definition, standardised data for 16 countries. This research note introduces WED, its construction principles, and presents preliminary findings on how economic elites differ across countries.

In this article we delve into the elites’ evolving forms of power to study the relationship between social change and capital accumulation. Drawing on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of the field of power and relying on the identification of the field’s effective agents in Switzerland, we investigate the changing relations among the most important forms of capital. We use prosopographical data spanning six historical periods from 1910 to 2015 and thanks to multiple correspondence analysis we uncover the changing structure of the field of power. We show the dominance of economic and organisational network powers throughout history. While both forms of power opposed before the Second World War, they could be accumulated together between the 1950s and the 1980s but opposed again in the recent period. The article contributes to ‘big picture’ sociology, offering historical accounts of broad social trends and provides evidence of a recent return to past inequality logics.

In the resurgence of elite sociology, formal (organizational-based network resources) and informal (non-organizational relations) social capital have garnered attention, but their mutual dynamics remain underexplored. This study addresses this gap, examining how both forms intersect among urban business elites, focusing on their roles on corporate boards, perceived as a front stage of power, and their places of residence, representing a back stage. Using multiple correspondence analysis, and thanks to social network analysis and geographic information systems, we examine the evolution of business elites (n = 2164) in Basel, Geneva and Zurich along the 20th century. Our findings identify two dominant elite fractions: the ‘heirs’ and the ‘established’. The heirs’ power is concentrated within a clearly defined spatial context especially through informal social capital, while the established derive their power from extensive possession of formal social capital. The varying presence of these two groups mirrors developments of Swiss capitalism in the 20th century.

The aim of this chapter is to understand the gender and health implications of extending working life policies and practices in countries characterised by contrasting gender regimes, pension systems and labour market structures. We begin by recognising the methodological and conceptual challenges associated with using survey data to study the working conditions of older men and women in the European context. Then, we attempt to avoid some of these biases in order to map the main factors that differentiate the working conditions of the 50+ age group across countries. The chapter is structured in two parts. Firstly, we use the OECD Employment Database and the Labour Force Survey (LFS) to map the gendered employment patterns of the over 50s in a range of European countries, selected for their contrasting gender and welfare regimes. Secondly, we use data from the sixth wave of the European Working Conditions Survey (EWCS) to carry out Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA), aimed at identifying the factors that differentiate the employment experiences of older (50+) workers in the European context. In conclusion, we stress the need to interpret the results of this MCA against the backdrop of gendered employment patterns across the life course and in relation to country-specific welfare regimes and pension systems.

This article focuses on historical elite dynamics and investigates elites' integration over time. We describe the changing relations and composition of the central circles in Swiss elite networks at seven benchmark years between 1910 and 2015 by relying on 22,262 elite individuals tied to 2587 organizations among eight key sectors, and identify for each year the most connected core of individuals. We explore network cohesion and sectoral bridging of the elite core and find that it moved from being a unitary corporate elite, before 1945, to an integrated corporatist elite, between the 1950s and 1980s, before fragmenting into a loose group, with an increased importance of corporate elites, in the 1990s onwards. The core was always dominated by business and their forms of legitimacy but, at times of crisis to the hegemony of corporate elites, after the Second World War and (only) shortly after the 2008 financial crisis, elite circles expanded and included individuals with delegated forms of power, such as politicians and unionists. In the most recent cohort (2015), the share of corporate elites in the core is similar to the one before the First World War and during the interwar period. This return to the past echoes findings on wealth inequality and economic capital accumulation by a small group of individuals organized around the most powerful companies.

Résumé À partir de 366 entretiens biographiques et 284 calendriers de vie collectés auprès de militant.e.s des années 1968 dans cinq métropoles françaises, et dans le cadre d’une recherche collective qui explore les conséquences biographiques de leur engagement tant dans leur sphère de vie militante que professionnelle et affective (Sombrero, 2013-2018), nous proposons une stratégie originale de traitement de ces données biographiques. En associant analyse de séquences, analyse des correspondances multiples, analyse factorielle multiple et analyse de clustering , nous avançons une proposition de méthode pour mieux répondre aux exigences théoriques d’une analyse interactionniste en termes de carrière. Laquelle permet de produire des typologies incarnées par des portraits représentatifs de chaque groupe identifié.

This chapter examines conceptual framework and formulates hypotheses about the characteristics of professors and their PhD networks. It analyses empirically the size and composition of the networks of PhDs of professors of the disciplines and discusses the results. The chapter focuses on two disciplines of the Swiss academic field: law and economic sciences. It examines two research questions: how do the size and the composition of the professors' PhD networks evolve over time? how do the networks of professors of law and of economic sciences differ in terms of composition? The chapter explains the size and composition of networks which potentially possess these reputational and multiplying characteristics of social capital: networks of PhDs. It examines two aspects of the social capital of professors of law and economic sciences: its composition in terms of elite sector and size. The chapter explains a decline of the placement power of the professors of both disciplines in the second half of the twentieth century.