The degree of identification that members of a profession feel with the concept of elite is, according to John Scott (2008), related to their degree of integration and cohesion, and their capacity for collective action. If the elite is defined as those who occupy formal positions of leadership in institutions of power, the top leaders of ministries of finance and culture are clearly part of the elite, but do they perceive themselves as such? An inductive analysis of 81 interviews with British, French and Norwegian top bureaucrats reveals that the British and French define themselves as part of the élite tout court, part of a ’societal elite’, while the latter define themselves as a more restricted elite, as a ’sectorial elite’. How should we understand these variations between different elite identities within a single profession but across different societal contexts? An examination of key dimensions in elite theory, the circulation of elites between positions in different sectors, and the characteristics of the higher education system in each of the three countries, indicate that the latter dimension is more interesting to follow up than the former. We conclude that sociologists studying elites and stratification should dialogue more closely with sociologists of education.