The EP as the last or intermediate stop? A longitudinal comparison between Italian and Spanish MEPs (1994-2019)

The international literature on MEPs' careers has grown in recent years. Much of this literature has mainly focused on identifying specific career paths and typologies of MEPs especially in relation to their previous and subsequent political experiences (Kakepaki & Karayiannis, 2021; Bigo-Nagy, 2019;.Salvati, 2016; Salvati & Vercesi, 2021). However, most of these studies either favoured a longitudinal perspective by sacrificing comparison -thus focusing on MEPs in only one member country- or by favouring comparison at the expense of the longitudinal perspective -that is, focusing only on one or maximum two legislatures. Few studies have tried to hold the two perspectives together by more effectively expanding our knowledge on the career profiles of MEPs (see for exceptions: Kopsch, et al. 2020; Dodeigne et al. 2022). Our work fits into this type of approach by proposing a comparison between two similar cases, namely two Southern European countries with a quasi-federal system or touched by an important regionalisation process, such as Spain and Italy, and by examining a rather long time period ranging from the IV to the IX EP legislature, i.e. from 1994 to 2019. Our dataset consists of 841 observations, 340 relating to Spanish MEPs and 501 to Italian ones. By taking into account the seminal work of Borchert (2011), our dependent variable is characterised by five distinctive career models: the EU Pensioners, the Ambitious Nationalists, the European Careerists; the Multilevel Surfers and the Outsiders. By relying on a multi-nominal regression analysis, our paper aims at understanding what types of MEPs prevailed in Spain and Italy and to what extent structural (the degree of regional autonomy and EP seats available per country); contextual (time elapses from EU membership); political (fragmentation; polarisation; party affiliation of MEPs) and socio-economic (gender) factors may have a specific impact in each career type.