Entry, Exit, and Everything in Between: An Intersectional Study of Political Ambition in Belgium

Research consistently shows that political ambition is unevenly distributed across gender, with women typically expressing lower ambition levels than men. And while political ambition is widely recognised as a central step towards fair and equal representation, most research is North American, quantitative and focused on the single-axis, leaving the motivations of minority candidates in multi-party, proportional-representation systems largely unexplored. This study addresses that gap by examining entry and exit decisions across a diverse sample of Belgian federal-election candidates. To capture the complexity of candidacy decisions, I will employ a mixed qualitative approach combining biographical and semi-structured interviews. Biographical interviews allow candidates to narrate their political journeys in their own words; revealing lived experiences, aspirations, and obstacles. Semi-structured interviews then guide reflection on key topics such as motivations, deterrents, decision-making processes, and perceptions of political opportunity. Each participant will be interviewed twice; initially with a biographical approach, followed months later by a semi-structured interview. The sample includes a broad spectrum of candidates, from first-time aspirants (rookies) in 2024 to those who ran in 2019 but chose not to run again (discretes). The resulting model will form the basis for two subsequent papers in the PhD, examining patterns of entry, persistence, and exit, with an intersectional lens on gender, age, and ethnicity. By mapping the factors that motivate or deter candidacy, this work provides a comprehensive framework for understanding the dynamics of political ambition and the barriers shaping candidacy across intersectional lines. The research contributes to literature by offering a European, multi-party and intersectional perspective on candidacy, linking entry and exit decisions to political attractiveness, trust, and broader forms of political participation. Beyond theory-building, the model has practical implications for fostering more inclusive political institutions by illuminating the factors that enable, or discourage, diverse voices from entering and sustaining political life. NB: This paper, the first step in my PhD project, will be presented as a work-in-progress, with the focus on research design, preliminary ideas and results rather than completed findings, as data collection will still be underway.