Who Lives Off Politics in the Czech Municipalities?

Modern democratic politics walks side by side with professionalisation, i.e. a process whereby politics is evolving into an occupation. When no income is derived from politics, it is in danger of turning into an oligarchy. However, attempts to make a steady source of income from politics (Weber 1919) can easily develop into social closure, hence, threatening the democracy, as such. In the Czech Republic, the first generation of politicians after the Velvet Revolution can be characterized, in Weber's terms, as living for politics. Typically, those politicians did not take advantage of the newly opened career opportunities, from which they had previously been excluded due to "cadre ceiling". However, in the new millennium the question of who lives off politics has gained significance. Mayors constitute the majority of full-time politicians in the Czech Republic, mainly because of a fragmented municipal structure (6251 municipalities mostly with less than 500 inhabitants). The council elects the mayor and also decides who will be fully-paid representative. The salaries of full-time mayors are affected mainly by the size of the municipality. Nevertheless, approximately 2,500 mayors of villages are not full time politicians. The level of remuneration for these politicians is set by municipal councils within the limits established by ministerial decree. Various studies point to the prevalence of returns to schooling, gender wage gap and higher-income non-manual occupations, in the Czech Republic as well as differences between the main centres and peripheral regions. The profile of the typical city mayors – college-educated men from non-manual occupations – coincides with the characteristics of people with higher incomes. In these presentation we ask a question of difference chance to become fully-paid vs. not full-time mayors in small municipalities. We test which of factors influencing wage are significantly linked with professionalized and non-professionalized mayors.