Professional politicians are sometimes seen as a class for itself attempting to form and reform democratic institutions according to their own collective self-interest. While this assumption seems highly plausible it remains rather blunt and is rarely supported by conclusive empirical evidence. This paper is addressing both these shortcomings. In the first part I want to sharpen the conceptual tools by focussing on the internal structure (and divisions) of such a political class as well as on its external limitations to pursue its self-interest. In the second part I will try to illustrate, how different structural features of such a class (in itself) may affect its capacity to act as a class for itself, i.e. its capacity to act as collective actor and the direction this action takes. The field in which I have studied the formation and pursuit of a collective self-interest of professional politicians is the institutionalisation of territorial political structures, especially processes of regional institution-building. Examples are taken from Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom.
