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This article examines the relationship between club affiliations by members of the House of Lords and their political and social backgrounds. The odds of being a club member and the networks of association created by clubs are positively associated with ascriptive, educational, occupational and political variables. The communities created by clubs augment inequalities in Lords’ representativeness. The evidence is incompatible with arguments that the British political elite is unified or that clubs integrate functionally differentiated groupings. The evidence is consistent, however, with clubs offering social unity to elites with vested interests in traditional status structures. A British establishment is still evident in the club community. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Elite theory critiques of corporate political action rest on the claim that it advances the political interests of elite status groups. This article examines that claim by investigating the relationship between a British corporation's propensity to make donations to the Conservative party and its directors' educational backgrounds and social club affiliations. Using a structural equivalence blockmodel, it is shown that among the largest 250 British corporations in 1995 there was a set with directors who came from elite educational backgrounds and were members of elite social clubs. These corporations made a disproportionate number of donations. I argue that these results support the elite theory critique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]