Political competition and politician quality: evidence from Italian municipalities

Paola, Maria De; Scoppa, Vincenzo

doi:10.1007/s11127-010-9683-9

“…And indeed, some studies suggest that the qualification of politicians depends on the intensity of political competition. Paola and Scoppa (2011) show empirically that the qualification of local politicians in Italy increases with political competition. Galasso and Nannicini (2011) find a similar effect for the Italian parliament and furthermore show that politicians from opposing political coalitions -with different qualification levels on average -converge to high levels of qualification in highly contested electoral districts.…”

Section: Hypothesis 6 Finance Ministers With Children Will Have Lowermentioning

confidence: 88%

“…Studies analyzing the effects of political competition on the quality of politicians (e.g., Paola and Scoppa, 2011;Galasso and Nannicini, 2011) indicate that stronger political competition increases the quality of politicians in terms of their educational attainment and professional experience. Political decision makers themselves and their characteristics have received much less attention, however.…”

Section: Relevance Of (Political) Decision Makersmentioning

confidence: 99%

The perfect finance minister: Whom to appoint as finance minister to balance the budget

Jochimsen

¹

,

Thomasius

²

2014

European Journal of Political Economy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in AbstractThe role and influence of the finance minister within the cabinet are discussed with increasing prominence in the recent theoretical literature on the political economy of budget deficits. It is generally assumed that the spending ministers can raise their reputation purely with new or more extensive expenditure programs, whereas solely the finance minister is interested to balance the budget. Using a dynamic panel model to study the development of public deficits in the German states between 1960 and 2009, we identify several personal characteristics of the finance ministers that significantly influence budgetary performance. Namely her professional background seems to affect budget deficits. During times of fiscal stress, our results can guide prime ministers in the nominating of finance ministers in order to assure sound budgeting.

show abstract

“…This measure has been extensively used in studies of political selection to capture enhanced practical skills, signaling ability, and civic engagement (Baltruite et al 2012;Besley and Reynal-Querol 2011;De Paola and Scoppa 2011;43 Ferraz and Finan 2011;Galasso and Nannicini 2011;SchwindtBayer 2011). We divide politicians into seven categories of educational attainment, ranging from having nine years of education to having a doctorate degree, and create one binary indicator for each category.…”

Section: Section S2 Details On Qualification Measuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Many studies have tended to add public employment to this list (see, e.g., De Paola and Scoppa 2011;. Others have classified some jobs as "brokerage jobs" or "politicsfacilitating occupations" such as teachers, journalists, government officials, and political researchers, arguing that persons with these occupational backgrounds have a number of subjective personal characteristics that increase the odds of being selected by the party .…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The Glass Ceiling in Politics: Formalization and Empirical Tests

Folke

¹

,

Rickne

²

2014

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractThere is a scarcity of women and minorities at the apex of political power. This paper formalizes the concept of the glass ceiling for political organizations and builds on previous research to suggest four testable criteria. A glass ceiling exists if women and/or racial minorities (1) are discriminated against in the organization's promotion process and (2) the discrimination increases in severity for the top levels of power and over an individual's career trajectory. We suggest a series of empirical tests for this phenomenon and apply them to longitudinal data on Swedish politicians. Results show that women face a glass ceiling, while minorities' career disadvantages are more severe at the earlier career steps (a "sticky floor"). There is an unequal distribution of political power in most contemporary democracies. Women make up 21.8 percent of the world's parliamentarians, but only 7.8 percent of its heads of government and 5.9 percent of its heads of state (UN Women 2014). Systematic data collection is lacking for racial and ethnic minorities, but previous research has documented a clear underrepresentation in parliaments (Bloemraad 2013), and casual inspection suggests a striking absence from top offices. These patterns constitute an important democratic deficit, and suggest that society may be drawing its leaders from an overly narrow pool of human talent. After all, citizens deserve to be led by the best person, not just the best (white) man, for the job.This paper tests whether the lack of women and minorities in the upper levels of political organizations can be explained by a glass ceiling effect. This is done in two steps. First, we draw on research from different academic disciplines to clearly define the metaphor of the glass ceiling for the political sector and in terms of four testable criteria. Second, we explain and showcase how these criteria can be tested empirically in a case study of Swedish local political organizations.Our paper extends the growing literature on the under-representation of women in political leadership by shifting the focus from macro-systematic explanations of vertical 3 inequality 1 to party-level and micro-level explanations. Compared to most previous work, this entails a shift from country-level data to uniquely detailed panel data for politicians and the nomination decisions among these politicians by hundreds of local party groups. We add a novel perspective to t...

show abstract

“…The politicians' level of education is in particular commonly used for this purpose (Baltrunaite et al, 2014;De Paola and Scoppa, 2011;Kotakorpi and Poutvaara, 2011). If Besley et al (2011) find a relation between national leaders' education and GDP growth, this relation remains to be verified in a more direct, simple setting.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Who are the ‘ghost’ MPs? Evidence from the French parliament

Gavoille

¹

2018

European Journal of Political Economy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This paper studies the characteristics of the ghost deputies of the French National Assembly, i.e. deputies who do not have any official recorded activity over a whole year. Using a rich dataset providing various information about all deputies from 1959 to 2012, the results indicate that the typical ghost deputy is an old man with a low level of schooling, member of a large party which does not support the government and who is elected in jurisdiction with a low level of political competition. However, personal characteristics are less and less correlated with performance over the years. Finally, ghost deputies face more difficulties to achieve reelection, but are penalized only at the first round, voters exclusively considering national factors at the second round.

show abstract

Political competition and politician quality: evidence from Italian municipalities

Abstract: Political competition, Politicians, Political selection, D72, D78, J45,

Cited by 71 publications

References 15 publications

The perfect finance minister: Whom to appoint as finance minister to balance the budget

The perfect finance minister: Whom to appoint as finance minister to balance the budget

The Glass Ceiling in Politics: Formalization and Empirical Tests

Who are the ‘ghost’ MPs? Evidence from the French parliament

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About