Linking Pre-Parliamentary Political Experience and the Career Trajectories of the 1997 General Election Cohort

Allen, Peter

doi:10.1093/pa/gss030

Cited by 63 publications

(56 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…In line with scholarly work (e.g., Allen ; Cairney ; Herzog ; Riddell , ) as well as the public debate (e.g., Groves ; Kellner ; Marshall‐Andrews ), I consider an MP to be a career politician if his or her previous remunerated occupation(s) has/have been only in politics or a closely related field, that is, an individual who lives and has only ever lived “from politics” (Weber ). I collected and hand‐coded the required data (including controls) for all 864 MPs using standard sources of biographies as well as MP and Parliament websites .…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… Note : Categories (most common examples only) based partly on previous work including Cairney (), Allen (), and Riddell ().…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Across parliamentary systems, increasing numbers of career politician MPs regularly stir public opinion and have led academics, the media, and political insiders to hypothesize about the incentives and motivations guiding this type of parliamentarian (e.g., Cowley ; Herzog ; King ; Lorenz and Micus ; Marshall‐Andrews ; Norton ; Oborne ; Patzelt ; Riddell ; Röper ; Saalfeld ; Savoie ; Scarrow ). Despite this intense public and scholarly “fascination” with career politicians (Allen , 686), we still lack a robust understanding of how and why an MP's career background might impact his or her legislative behavior.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Submissive Lobby Fodder or Assertive Political Actors? Party Loyalty of Career Politicians in the UK House of Commons, 2005–15

Heuwieser

2017

Legislative Studies Qtrly

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Are career politician members of parliament (MPs) more or less likely to vote against the party line than their peers? Despite growing interest in the behavior of career politicians across parliamentary systems, answers to this question are marked by considerable theoretical and empirical uncertainty. I derive the two most common (but opposing) behavioral predictions before testing them over all legislative votes of two UK House of Commons terms (2005–15) using multilevel modeling of new and disaggregated data on MPs' occupational backgrounds. The finding that career politicians are more likely to rebel challenges conventional wisdom and provides an important empirical foundation for the ongoing debate.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… Note : Categories (most common examples only) based partly on previous work including Cairney (), Allen (), and Riddell ().…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Submissive Lobby Fodder or Assertive Political Actors? Party Loyalty of Career Politicians in the UK House of Commons, 2005–15

Heuwieser

2017

Legislative Studies Qtrly

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“…Third, research suggests that careerist individuals tend to be more successful in achieving frontbench office than colleagues who have not had pre-legislative political experience as their main source of income (Allen, 2013). This is reflected in the number of career politicians making it into party leadership roles (Barber, 2014;Cowley, 2012;King, 1983).…”

Section: Revisiting the Complaints And Re-operationalising The Termmentioning

confidence: 99%

What Do We Mean When We Talk about the ‘Political Class’?

Allen

Cairney

2015

Political Studies Review

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Recent years have seen an explosion of popular complaint about the British 'political class'. Within this narrative, the political class is feckless, unrepresentative, immoral and elitist. It rules over 'ordinary people' from Westminster with no conception of what 'real people' think. How can one respond to such complaints? It is argued in this article that a coherent solution will only be possible when the problem can be defined clearly. 'Political class' should not be a catch-all description for elected politicians. Instead, the 'political class' narrative should be divided into three distinct but related concepts -the political elite, political professionalisation and political careerism -in order to highlight the ways in which the term needlessly conflates distinct ideas and adds more confusion to an already vague debate.

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“…These jobs support potential candidates until they are elected, since candidacy is an increasingly time-consuming task, and, in many cases, help them become elected, because they give them essential links to party recruitment. Indeed, an even smaller pool, from jobs related directly to Westminster or government, may come to be described as promotion-facilitating since they appear to help newly elected MPs achieve rapid promotion within their parties (Cowley, 2012;Allen, 2013). Consequently, 'the political class inhabits its own bubble, utterly divorced from the lives of voters ' (McKinstry, 2014).…”

Section: Can Parties Solve the 'Political Class' Problem? Do New Venumentioning

confidence: 99%

Solving the problem of social background in the UK ‘political class’: Do parties do things differently in Westminster, devolved and European elections?

2015

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It is now commonplace to criticise the failings of Westminster's 'political class'. One part of this criticism regards the limited extent to which Westminster politicians reflect the social background of the voting population. Each party has addressed the problem in different ways, with Labour more likely to focus on the representation of women and the Conservatives on people with 'proper jobs' before election.i Devolved and European elections have provided new opportunities for parties:Labour's push for more elected women has been relatively effective in the Scottish, Welsh and European elections; and, before UKIP made significant gains in European Parliament elections in 2014, it promised candidates who were 'not career politicians'. Yet, overall, new levels of elected representation have not produced a distinctive 'political class'. There is still a common pattern of professionalization across devolved, Westminster and European parliaments, in which elected politicians have often similar kinds of education and employment background, and generally struggle to mirror the social background of their populations.

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Linking Pre-Parliamentary Political Experience and the Career Trajectories of the 1997 General Election Cohort

Cited by 63 publications

References 12 publications

Submissive Lobby Fodder or Assertive Political Actors? Party Loyalty of Career Politicians in the UK House of Commons, 2005–15

Submissive Lobby Fodder or Assertive Political Actors? Party Loyalty of Career Politicians in the UK House of Commons, 2005–15

What Do We Mean When We Talk about the ‘Political Class’?

Solving the problem of social background in the UK ‘political class’: Do parties do things differently in Westminster, devolved and European elections?

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