Usually, political careers are studied from an ex-post perspective: We analyze the office experiences of those who have made it into some institution, usually a parliament or an executive.
In this paper I want to do the reverse: start with a group of ypung political hopefuls holding a office within their local party or the party's youth organization at a given point in time. I will then follow the career trajectories of the members of this group over time. How many of them end up holding a legislative mandate or executive position? Which of them get there? Who gets where? Are available slots largely filled from within this group or are they being passed over in favor of 'outsiders'?
The paper attempts to study career patterns 'in their making' in order to get a better understanding of individual priorities, institutional selectivities, and the mechanisms that produce and reproduce certain career patterns.
This explorative study which is supposed to lead to a larger project eventually will be based on party archives, publicly available biographical material, and some interviews.
