Experiments and Surveys on Political Elites

One of the major developments in political science in the past decade has been the rise of experiments and surveys on political elites. Yet, the increase in the number of elite studies has outpaced our collective understanding of best practices and how we know a good elite experiment when we see one. In this article, we discuss some of the challenges in the study of political elites—from who counts as an elite to how to best utilize elite experiments in the context of broader research designs. We also offer recommendations on questions of access, recruitment, and representativeness, as well as designs that researchers can use to study “eliteness” without access to elites.