The intention of this paper is to review the ways in which the role of urban elites has been examined and interpreted, and to show how the traditional concepts of social control and hegemony have required modification. The paper identifies two phases of study. The first phase was descriptive, concerned primarily with the identification and categorization of elites. The second phase, which began in the 1980s, was interactional and explored the influence of elites in inter-class relationships. The interactional role of elites is discussed in detail in relation to the exemplar of mid-nineteenth-century Manchester. The paper continues by considering the changes which elites began to undergo in the transitional conditions of the late nineteenth century. The significance of recent work is assessed and the paper concludes with some comments regarding the future direction of study on urban elites.