Comparing the Schooling of Irish and UK Cabinet Ministers: A Demonstration of the Usefulness of an Elite Index

Abstract

Elites and their formation have become of increasing public concern and research interest in recent years. The lessons from such research can be made more generalizable if a measure of elite formation could be developed that is comparable across countries. But, the nature of elite formation renders this a complex task. Nevertheless, in this paper, by building upon measures employed in other fields, such as industrial economics, we construct indices that facilitate the comparison of elite formation across countries. We illustrate this through a comparison of the schooling of Irish and British cabinet ministers.

Keywords: cabinet ministers, concentration, elites, elite formation, Ireland, schools, United Kingdom (UK)