Career patterns and staff turnover of the French administrateurs du Sénat (1950-2010) :

Career patterns and staff turnover analysis is a way to supplement declarative and reputational methods in order to understand the evolution of their roles and collective resources. The evolution of the career patterns, and especially the evolution of the positions held outside the Senate, such as the increasing number of administrateurs being appointed in ministerial cabinets since the 2000's, confirms the corps' reputation of doing a political work (agenda setting, political advice, etc.). However, there is no correlation between committees chairmen and staff turnover. Staff turnover is more related to the change of committees' chiefs of secretariat and the changes of the executive political majority. There is no revolving door phenomenon. Several types of careers can be stressed out.