Title: The Brahmin Left and the Merchant Right in Parliaments and Governments: The Class Transformation of Social-Democratic and Leftist Parties in Europe

The electoral fate of social democratic parties in the 21st century is one of the most discussed and debated questions in academic and policy circles, alike. The question at the heart of the debate is whether the electoral decline of social democratic parties is due to their ideological convergence to the ideological centre in terms of their adopted policies or due to the decline in manufacturing jobs and broader socio-economic changes. More recently Piketty (2018) and Gethin et al (2022) found that in the past forty years leftist parties have increasingly appealed to educated voters and have emphasised sociocultural issues, becoming the parties of the Brahmin left instead of the working class. An understudied and less understood question is whether and how social democratic parties have changed internally in terms of their class composition becoming more and more alike center-right parties, not due to voters’ low demand for working-class representatives but rather to other factors related to the calculations and procedures that determine party nominations and electoral strategies’ (Maayan Mor, Carles Boix, 2024: 535). Are leftist governments, and social democratic government parties in particular, different from center-right parties in terms of their social class composition? Utilizing data on the class composition of MPs in the UK, France, Germany and Greece in the past 50 years as well as of cabinet ministers across 18 parliamentary democracies since 1945, this article investigates how leftist and social democratic parties and governments have changed in terms of their class composition over time and across political systems. Methodologically, we are particularly interested in examining three indicators: the educational level, former occupations and the personal income and wealth of MPs and cabinet ministers. The study of parliamentary elites, particularly the socio-demographic characteristics of representatives over time, allows for a better understanding of the changes that have affected the ideological landscape of European leftist parties, especially after the 1980s. This reflects a broader movement of changes in the nature of contemporary party systems.