Elite Recruitment in National and International Settings

Abstract

The comparative study of recruitment patterns and turnover in parliaments and cabinets has not been truly cross-national and has, instead, entailed comparisons of national case studies. This has inhibited progress in understanding the effects of varying institutions on recruitment and turnover patterns. Even though some case studies facilitate a quasi-experimental research design due to major regime changes like the transitions from dictatorship to democracy in Southern Europe (Tavares de Almeida, Costa Pinto & Bermeo 2003), or less wide-ranging institutional reforms, research progress has been quite limited. The collection of systematic comparative data on legislative and executive careers opens the door to a more robust evaluation of institutional effects on recruitment and turnover patterns (see e.g. Matland and Studlard 2004 ; Morgenstern, Scott and Siavelis 2008 ; Huber and Martinez-Gallardo 2008). This panel solicits comparative analyses of political elite recruitment patterns and turnover rates focused on the effects of institutions, such as regime types (authoritarian, totalitarian and stable/unstable democratic), government systems (parliamentary, semi-presidential and presidential), state structures (federal vs unitary), electoral systems, as well as the effects of gender, ethnic and linguistic quotas. Papers dealing with how experience in transnational settings affects the selection/deselection of national political elites will also be welcomed. A third aspect to be deal with is the representation of different member countries on supra-national decision-making bodies (e.g. the European Commission, transnational NGOs, boards of directors of global corporations), the institutional and informal allocation rules (e.g. formal vs. informal quotas) and their impact on the representation of country-specific interests in these bodies.

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