From Representation to Meritocracy: Understanding Professionalisation of the Political Class Through UK Parliamentary Pay Debates, 1911-2011

Observers frequently point to the rise of ‘professional politicians’ as a source of distrust with political elites. This attitude is rooted, in part, in a longstanding public reticence about a salaried political class. However, few studies have provided systematic evidence of how politicians themselves negotiated this process. To explore how the self-presentation of the political class in a key democracy shifted over time to facilitate the emergence of full-time, professionally remunerated legislators, a thematic content analysis (TCA) was conducted of the 23 major debates on legislators’ salaries in the United Kingdom House of Commons between 1911 and 2011. Using a previously developed coding scheme, the analysis identified 1360 individual statements covering seven major themes and 22 arguments. Results show that while payment was originally framed as an allowance to facilitate democratic representation, over time rhetoric used by politicians in relation to their own pay became increasingly meritocratic, emphasising the recruitment of highly qualified people as legislators. Qualitative insights from these debates also throw light on how and why the language which the British political class used to describe its role changed over time.