Introduction
Throughout history, human societies have exhibited hierarchical class structures based on unequal access to both material and symbolic resources. These inequalities are not confined to economic wealth but extend to cultural, social, and symbolic forms of capital that shape lifestyles, values, and collective perceptions (Roger, 2023). Historical transformations—such as the sixteenth-century English enclosures described by Marx (1970)—illustrate that shifts in economic relations also redefine social norms, interactions, and hierarchies.
Social hierarchy remains a fundamental feature of all societies, where competition is the engine of both individual and collective behavior. Class competition operates across multiple dimensions—economic, political, and symbolic—and is often mediated by political parties. Parties function as institutionalized arenas through which class-based interests are articulated and converted into policy. Contrary to the post-industrial “end of class” thesis, recent research confirms that social class continues to shape political preferences. Political parties not only reflect existing class divisions but also actively construct and mobilize them by politicizing key issues that reinforce or moderate class-based distinctions.
This study explores how the class origins of political party elites and founding members influence their policy orientations, organizational strategies, and ideological positioning. It asks: To what extent do class-based capitals—economic, cultural, social, and symbolic—affect the policy decisions of political parties? The study adopts Pierre Bourdieu’s theory of capital, field, and habitus as a comprehensive framework to analyze how inherited class positions and embodied disposition’s structure political behavior within the Iranian context.

Materials and Methods
The research develops an analytical model integrating Bourdieu’s three key concepts—capital, field, and habitus—to identify and explain how class origin translates into political practice. The methodological design proceeds in three stages:
1. Identifying Class Origin through Capitals
Using Bourdieu’s fourfold typology of capital—economic, social, cultural, and symbolic—the class origins of party founders and senior members are systematically measured.
o Economic capital (financial and material assets) is evaluated through income, property ownership, and business activity.
o Social capital is assessed by the size, density, and diversity of professional and political networks.
o Cultural capital includes educational attainment, cultural participation, and symbolic knowledge, divided into embodied, objectified, and institutionalized states.
o Symbolic capital refers to social prestige and legitimacy derived from recognition and reputation.
Data sources include interviews, questionnaires, archival and biographical analysis, and social network mapping. To capture intergenerational effects, the study compares members’ capitals with those of their parents, tracing alignment or divergence between inherited and acquired assets.
2. Analyzing the Political Field
The political field is conceptualized as a structured arena where parties and actors struggle over legitimate authority. It possesses its own logic, hierarchies, and rules that mediate the influence of class origins. The study examines how access to positions of power, the formation of alliances, and symbolic struggles over legitimacy reproduce the hierarchies of capital within the political domain. Empirical data come from discourse analysis of party documents, elite interviews, and case studies of inter-party competition.
3. Examining Habitus as a Mediating Mechanism
Habitus—the system of durable dispositions internalized through socialization—acts as a link between objective structures and subjective action. Biographical narratives are analyzed to trace how class-conditioned perceptions and values shape decision-making, strategies, and ideological coherence within parties. Habitus explains why individuals from similar class origins often share implicit orientations, even without explicit class consciousness.
This multi-layered design allows for a relational understanding of how class background influences political outcomes—not through direct causality but through structured mediation within a competitive field governed by its own rules.

Discussion and Results
Findings indicate that the class origin of party elites profoundly affects their political outlook and policy-making. Parties led by elites from affluent or upper-middle backgrounds tend to design policies that preserve and legitimize their economic and symbolic advantages. Such orientations manifest not as explicit defense of privilege but through emphasis on market liberalization, meritocracy, and technocratic efficiency—mechanisms that convert economic capital into symbolic legitimacy.
Conversely, parties whose leadership comes from culturally rich yet economically modest backgrounds emphasize education, cultural empowerment, and moral reform as vehicles of social mobility. Their policies often express the habitus of educated professionals seeking recognition and social inclusion. However, their embeddedness in the dominant field restricts radical change; they remain bound by the rules of symbolic legitimacy defined by upper-class actors.
In Iran’s complex class structure—marked by blurred boundaries between economic, religious, and cultural elites—three dominant class patterns are evident:
· Upper-class elites, possessing high economic and symbolic capital, exert influence indirectly through patronage networks and political mediation.
· Middle-class technocrats, with strong cultural and professional capital, promote reformist and expert-driven discourse.
· Lower-class actors, with limited capital, rely on populist narratives and moral appeals but face structural barriers to lasting influence.
The political field imposes its own constraints: even parties with lower-class roots must moderate their rhetoric to remain viable. Class-based habitus thus interacts with field dynamics to produce “strategic moderation,” reinforcing existing hierarchies under the guise of pluralism. The result is a paradoxical reproduction of inequality: while political competition appears open, the symbolic and institutional mechanisms of the field favor actors whose habitus aligns with dominant norms.
Furthermore, analysis of class habitus reveals distinct modes of political perception. Elites from privileged families display a habitus of entitlement, caution, and pragmatism; those from modest origins show persistence, moral conviction, and collective orientation. Yet both must navigate the same symbolic boundaries of legitimacy. Through this process, class origins are transformed—not erased—within political practice.

Conclusion
This study shows that class origin is a crucial yet often hidden determinant of political behavior and party policy. Drawing on Bourdieu’s concepts of capital, field, and habitus, it reveals that politics operates within, not apart from, social hierarchies where inherited inequalities are reproduced and legitimized. In Iran’s complex socio-political context, class-based capitals still define access to power: economic elites convert wealth into influence, the middle class mediates between reform and establishment, and lower-class actors remain symbolically present but structurally limited. By translating Bourdieu’s theory into operational tools, the study offers a new analytical lens for examining how capital configurations shape policy. It concludes that political institutions serve as arenas of symbolic reproduction, where evolving discourse continues to conceal enduring class structures.