Professional Politicians: Towards a Comparative Perspective

Individual Ambition and Institutional Opportunity: A Conceptual Approach to Political Careers in Multi-level Systems

“…The given institutional structure of opportunity which determines availability and defines the relative accessibility and attractiveness of offices may, for analytical purposes, be fruitfully divided into four different aspects (Borchert, 2003b):…”

Careerists Versus Coal-Miners: Welfare Reforms and the Substantive Representation of Social Groups in the British Labour Party

“…Working-class people find it increasingly difficult to enter politics. Places as diverse as Belgium, Canada, Germany, Norway, Portugal, the UK, former Communist countries in Eastern Europe, the US House, sub-national parliaments in Catalonia and Scotland, and the supra-national European Parliament all exemplify these trends (Norris and Levendusky 1995;Scarrow 1997;Best and Cotta 2000;Borchert 2003; Shabad and Slomczynski 2002;Narud and Valen 2008;Stolz 2010;Koop and Bittner 2011;Wauters 2012;MacKenzie 2015;Evans and Tilley 2017;Lamprinakou et al 2017;Ohmura et al 2018). Other places, such as Italy after its 1994 realignment, have seen falls in the number of career politicians due to the entry of new parties (Fiers and Secker 2007).…”

Multi-level Political Careers in the USA: The Cases of African Americans and Women

“…The political class in the USA, as well as elsewhere, exists because its members share certain values. Borchert (2003) argues that the political class shares an identity and moves beyond goals related solely to policy and power to goals related to their own material well-being. What they have is a "collective interest in a reliable income from politics and in a reasonable chance for career maintenance and advancement .…”