Social proximity matters? Revisiting the effect of government size on parliament’s professionalization.

Previous research has examined the consequences of institutional professionalism on parliamentary composition, government composition, power of statehouse leaders, gubernatorial effectiveness, and politicians’ ambition. However, only a few researchers addressed a fundamental and important question of what factors help to explain variation in institutional professionalization. Despite this, no one has addressed, in a systematic and comparative way, a core question in terms of professionalization, the co-variation in terms of size and power. In other words, to what extent institutional professionalization is explained by the population of the state or its institutional capacity. Malhorta (2006), Mooney (1995), and King (2000) argued how population and institutional capacities influenced the level of professionalization. Due to the fact that the more heterogeneity there is in a state, the more the necessity of efficient decision exists. The larger states should increase the demand for professional politicians due to the assumption that they are more efficient. In the same vein, the enlargement of the capacities of institutions, and the variation on the time demands should incentivize too the establishment of a professionalized legislative body. But what happens when there is a national-sovereign state with small-scale size and social proximity; it is less necessary to have a professionalized legislative body? Social proximity makes less important the size of government as a determinant of professionalization?