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This chapter shows the professionalization of the political class in Great Britain, a country that until the early 1970s was dominated by the amateur politician. Both major parties in Britain, the Conservatives and the Labour Party, created the crucial preconditions for the emergence and establishment of the political class, and it was in their interest to accelerate the process of professional i zation. Basic conditions have been carried through the steady increase of MPs’ salaries since the 1970s, an expansion of political occupations, and different mechanisms for career maintenance. Moreover, previous institutional reforms have not changed the composition of the p o litical class as much as they have strengthened the process of professionalization of the existing political class. Newly developed political networks within different policy areas foster the development of the career politician, who early in his or her career e n ters politics and wants to stay there; the networks facilitate both entry into politics and maint e nance within the political class.

The professionalization of politics in Germany was hindered by the explicit rejection of legislative salaries in the German constitution until 1906. Thus, it was the Social Democratic Party and various interest groups that provided organizational and financial resources for early professionalization. Parties were strengthened from the Weimar Republic on, leading to Germany being politically dominated by parties today. Professional politicians today are primarily to be found in the federal Parliament (‘Bundetag’) and the highly professional state legislatures. Mostly, they are party regulars, which is reenforced by the strong role of parties in the polity and by the electoral system linking political careers to intra-party decision-making.

American politicians have about the greatest choice in terms of the electoral offices they want to pursue. However, only a minority of these numerous offices is professionalized. Moreover, while partisan coordination of political careers was true in the second half of the nineteenth century, it no longer is. Today American politicians largely are political entrepreneurs running their own political careers with the help of other professions that have developed around professional politics and of interest groups, which collect and donate most of the money needed for electoral campaigns. The most highly prized office is that of a member of Congress. Professional politicians in the United States, hence, are mostly professional legislators. It is here that long careers can be realized whereas executive terms tend to be rather short. Changes in the situation of politicians occur most frequently as an often- unintended result of institutional reform, which has been high on the agenda for quite some time.

The influence of local political careers has been crucial to the evolution of democratic leadership in Mexico. An especially strong link exists between local career experience and politicians who are leaders in the national legislative branch. The fathers of leading PAN politicians often were candidates for state and federal deputy positions, and this suggests the importance of politically active families for the leading opposition party. Family ties have persisted through the decades, especially at the local level, suggesting the ability of informal political characteristics to resist broad and deep institutional changes.

Following its late democratization, Spain immediately experienced a development towards political professionalism, a process in which the political parties have been decisive as they soon succeeded in monopolizing their position as the sole intermediating actor between the political system and society. As Spain's parties are heavily centralized and hierarchical, pursuing an individual political career has become virtually impossible without passing through parties, which have thus emerged as the predominant gatekeepers. Although political careers mostly start on the local level, they may take different paths afterwards with the national Parliament being an important but often a transitional stage. Thanks to the high degree of politicization, an abundance of fallback options exists in the spheres of state and society, whether in the public administration, public enterprises, or the parties themselves. For the individual politician, this system of partitocracy provides a relatively high degree of professional security and guarantees a constant 'recycling' of the political class as a whole.

The purpose is to provide an initial assessment of the impact of the introduction of the mixed‐member proportional (MMP) electoral system on the New Zealand political system, especially with regard to the normative criteria established by the New Zealand Royal Commission on the Electoral System. However, since the normative nature of these criteria may limit the breadth of any analysis (they are not necessarily comprehensive and unambiguous, nor do they provide a watertight framework for evaluation), this particular discussion of the impact of MMP on the New Zealand political system is left until the last section. The bulk of the chapter instead employs the findings of political scientists on the relationships between electoral systems, political behavior, and political institutions. These are presented in 10 sections: Anticipating the New Electoral System; The Election and Government Formation; The Political Parties and the Party System; Political Recruitment and Careers; Voting Behavior; Parliament; Government Transition and Durability; Government and the Policy Process; The Future of the New Electoral System; and Winners and Losers. The authors make the point that (as in Germany) personalized geographic representation has continued even as the overall system has been made more proportional.

This chapter shows how the regionalised institutional opportunity structures in conjunction with the non-institutional effects of regionalism are shaping professional political careers in Catalonia and Scotland. It analyses the aspect of functional differentiation of regional politicians vis-à-vis regional citizens and examines the territorial differentiation of regional politicians vis-à-vis national politicians. It describes the objective structural features of the political classes in Catalonia and Scotland and identifies the dominant career patterns in both regions.

This chapter examines the political distress and land war in Ireland during the period from 1877 to 1882. It discusses British Prime Minister William Gladstone's visit to Ireland in October 1877 to reform his old Irish constituency, and the power struggle within the home rule party. The chapter highlights the formation of the land league and the incarceration of Charles Stewart Parnell, which had a positive impact on his political career and popularity. It also discusses the impact of the land war in defining and strengthening the sense of national identity.

This chapter details Nancy Pelosi’s rise to the speakership. How she got there is the remarkable personal story of a housewife and mother who, as she has put it, made it from the kitchen to the House. But the story is also a narrative about the changing face of American politics and the changing character of the House of Representatives. Considering Pelosi’s rise in California politics, the way she built her career in the House of Representatives, and her rise to the speakership enables us not only to understand her career in the context of the political forces that shaped it but also to understand better those forces through the prism of her career.

This chapter considers Macaulay's youthful conception of the historian's task and examines how much of it survived from his political experiences. Macaulay's political career both sustained and threatened this ideal. In one sense his reputation was political. It gave him the respectability and the contacts which he valued. Macaulay's later essays were in large part exercises in narrative technique. Political experience may well have increased his scepticism about the primacy of social history, as it impressed upon his mind the impact of political institutions and the forms by which decisions which affect large numbers of people are actually made. He judged his own work against his original aims, and realized he had fallen short of them. But that does not mean that those aims had fundamentally changed. In the event, most critics succumbed to the popular enthusiasm in his History of England. The major exception was John Wilson Croker.

This introductory chapter discusses the objective of this volume, which is to investigate how regional political institutions affect professional political careers in Scotland and Catalonia, and how, in turn, the professional self-interest of these politicians is influencing the institutionalisation of regional politics. This volume uses case-study approaches to trace the emergence of a regional political class in Catalonia and in Scotland. This chapter suggests that political professionalisation and regionalisation are delineated as two macro-processes of functional and territorial differentiation closely related to democratisation and state modernisation. It also introduces the concept of political class as a major analytical tool to break the analysis down to the micro-level.

This book seeks to understand Nancy Pelosi, not just as a Speaker of the House, or even as its first female Speaker, but also as a reflection of a new era in American politics. This chapter maps the terrain and introduces the themes that guide the narrative. Pelosi’s story opens a window on social, political, and institutional forces that have framed her career, shaped her leadership, and transformed the context within which the speakership has evolved. These trends are labeled as the “New American Politics.” Since Pelosi is the first woman to serve as Speaker, the chapter specifically explores the gender dimensions of this new incarnation of the political system. Finally, it turns to the implications of these trends for the speakership itself.

This chapter focuses on legislators’ backgrounds, exploring whether legislative quotas in Argentina lead to the nomination of unrepresentative or unqualified female parliamentarians. Susan Franceschet and Jennifer M. Piscopo compare male and female legislators’ demographic data, including age, marital status, and number of children; their education and professional backgrounds; and their extent and type of political experience prior to holding office. While all female legislators are “quota women,” differences between men and women in the Argentine parliament show that quotas have not eliminated gendered political career patterns. As compared to men, the women are similar in age, less likely to be married, and tend to have fewer children; are equally highly educated, but with distinct educational and professional backgrounds; and much less likely to have held executive-level office previously. These differences do not reveal an innate inferiority of female politicians, but rather reveal that quotas enhance the overall diversity of legislators.

This chapter discusses Venizelos' entry into Greek politics. Venizelos was an ambitious man. His success in solving the deadlock in Greece and the leadership gap he discovered there encouraged him to prepare for a political career on the mainland, although it is difficult to establish the exact point in his career when he began to think of such a step. Most likely it was long before 1910, by which time he was already forty-six years old; but it was only in 1910 that a clear opportunity arose. Venizelos was elected first deputy for Attica and Boeotia during the 8 August elections (in 1910). On 5 September, he addressed an impressive Athenian gathering in Constitution Square and set forth his political agenda. This appearance marked the beginning of a political relationship between Venizelos and his supporters that transformed the nature of political leadership in Greece.

This chapter examines the activities and career of British politician Edmund Burke during the period from 1788 to 1789. According to his letters and writings, Burke spent 1788 mostly on farming and writing correspondence. During this period, for various political reasons, Burke lost favour with the king, the public, and even many of his own associates. He was particularly hurt by the disregard of this because his entire political career had been devoted to its service.

Ralph Montagu, later first duke of Montagu, served as ambassador to the court of Louis XIV on two occasions and, at a time when French taste was gaining ground across Europe amongst the aristocratic and political elites, he appears as one of its most enthusiastic supporters. His material legacy – including Boughton House with its extraordinary collection of seventeenth-century decorative art and paintings, furniture, and textiles – has prompted much interest from art historians who have suggested that he was dazzled by the French court and became a leader of the new taste on his return to England. This chapter looks beyond the extant material evidence and considers in more detail his political career, which was inextricably bound up with his social and cultural life, and tries to address what lay behind his lavish consumption. It shows that Montagu’s artistic patronage was politically inspired, a way of manipulating his environment; it was driven by motives of comfort, wealth, and, above all, personal and familial aggrandizement.