World Elite Database

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

We are an international consortium of scholars from Chile, China, Denmark, Italy, France, Finland, Germany, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. We work together to develop a new standardized data regime to study, and share data about elites.

Our 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.