Degradable Elites? Determinants of Elite Change in Europe in the XXI Century

The paper moves from the recent discussion on elite circulation in Europe, in times of crisis of the classic model of representative democracy and concerning increasing rates of public opinion’s mistrust. An empirical research is conducted on the figures of parliamentary turnover in several European democracies, in a longitudinal perspective. After testing the validity of different propositions about the relevance of both voluntary and involuntary reasons of parliamentary exit, the paper analyses a few intensive cases studies, providing qualitative data on the effects of recent critical elections in terms of elite change. This will lead to discuss, in the final section of the paper, a more refined interpretative model of parliamentary turnover in Europe, and a first general assessment of the magnitude of parliamentary elite change in Europe during the first decades of XXI century.