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Summary Politicans course from professor Walgrave
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A summary of professor Stefaan Walgrave's course Politicians at the University of Antwerp. Result: 15/20.
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COURSE: POLITICIANSPROFESSOR WALGRAVE
UA POLITICAL SCIENCE 2020/2021
Intro: why this course?
A. Individual Politicians are ‘important’
Substantively
Political decision-making = most important dep. variable in pol. science
Elites are key decision makers: what they think and how they behave is
consequential
Public opinion is (much more) irrelevant for political decision-making than
the behaviour of politicians
Epistemologically
Institutions do not ‘act’ an sich, only individuals do!
Studying individuals shifts focus to agency (best level of analysis)
Empirically
A lot of heterogeneity among elites, different politicians behave in different
ways (rules of institutions do not fully determine behaviour of politicians!)
[During the talks, we will see this]
Politicians follow public opinion and attention so we need to follow
individual elites
Methodologically
Apply dominant behavioural approach to elites (better connection with
main stream where we often analyse individual citizens)
Solves analytic small N-problem: N(institutions)< N(politicians)
Normatively
Citizens are the problem in representation: uninformed, incorrect voting, …
Politicians are the link between vote and policy, the keys of democracy
If representation works somehow, it is due to elites who ‘read’ society and
public opinion and act accordingly
B. But, individual politicians are understudied
Example: field of political communication
Journal ‘Political Communication’ : currently #1 journal in political
science, covering the full domain of political communication
Four recent issues (2014-2015): 31 papers and only 1 is about individual
elite behaviour
Why Understudied?
Democratic idealism: overemphasis on citizens out of an unrealistic
conception of democracy (‘citizens and what they think matters’)
o Overstatement of citizens impact/importance (e.g. VB’s electoral
success but no policy effect)
Institutionalism: belief that institutions are fully determining elite
behaviour (focus on macro or meso; output of institutions and their rules)
, Ideology: negative legacy of old ‘ideological’ work
o e.g. Mills’ “The Power Elite”: ordinary citizens are relatively
powerless subjects of manipulation by elite entities
o Dislike for politicians, many people almost even despise them
o Nostalgia for former ‘statesmen’: “we need a second Dehaene”
Access to them: our pet (quantitative) methods are hard to apply to
politicians, e.g. surveys and experiments etc.
Lecture 1: Who are politicians?
A. Who are the politicians?
Politicians are not representative for the population they represent
Male, highly educated, high income, professionals, typical personality, etc.
Same skew in political participation more generally, gets stronger with
‘difficult’ and ‘intense’ forms:
o The higher up the political ladder, the more skewed the composition
of the political class
(voters<party members<candidates<MPs<ministers)
o Only petitions are more female-dominant: according to Walgrave
because they are often organised in shopping areas…
B. Why are political participants different?
Willing to (self-selection)
o Idealism; want to change society in what they perceive as better
o Ambition: desire for power, fame, … (but fame is very relative!)
o Socialization for this: e.g. through high social class (role of
politicians is a respectful position) or through family, or etc.
Able to
o Skills-wise (e.g. perseverance, communication, resilience):
withstand criticism and personal attacks
o Biographically ‘available’ to do it (e.g. higher income, having free
time, a job when they quit politics, …)
Asked to
o Recruitment and selection: self-sustaining skew
[‘Old boys networks’, for example PM’s from Eton-school in UK]
o Networks are crucial! (e.g. work leads to contacts in politics)
Illustration: the skills a (good) politician needs
Survey of 410 politicians (MPs, ministers, party leaders) in Belgium,
Canada and Israel (INFOPOL project, 2015)
Different electoral systems
, What are most important skills or qualities a good MP should have? And
which behaviour and activities you consider to be typical for a good MP?
Results: Canada and Belgium pretty similar, Israel is different
C. Politicians = male
Long tradition of gender studies in political science
Only 24.3% of all national parliamentarians were women as of February 2019, a
slow increase from 11.3% in 1995.
Best: Rwanda (61%)
Worst: Yemen, Oman, Indonesia (none or 1 woman)
Belgium 14th (43%): quota in Belgium (No. 1 and 2 from different genders)
UK 32.0% • Italy 31% • Canada 26.3% • China 24.2% • USA 19.4%
Higher position are more skewed
only 1/5th ministers internationally are female in 2019
As of June 2019, 11 women are serving as Head of State and 12 are serving
as Head of Government (= 5%)
But there is a positive trend occurring
D. Politicians = highly educated
Bovens & Wille (2018), Diploma democracy: the rise of political meritocracy
Important because [political preferences/attitudes/behaviour/life style] of high- and
low-educated are very different
Share of highly-educated (post-secondary) in Belgian population age 15-
54: 12% in 1987 and 29% in 2016
But MP’s: 70% in 1987 and 100% in 2016
Education is an important (and direct effect) predictor of political interest,
knowledge and participation
Highly educated are better at recognizing their interests, formulating them
and acting upon them
But education in itself is not a category of political mobilization (↔
gender, income, profession, ethnic background…), there is no high-
educated party
If university tends to make someone more left wing and the political elite is high
educated, how come there are right-wing parties?
Answer: politicians are more left wing than their voters, but they estimate
the public opinion much more right-wing and they follow this perception!
, Is the ‘degree-cracy’ a democratic problem?
No! Society and policy making is complex and we need trained and expert
politicians (output legitimacy)
o Policy cannot be entrusted to indifferent, uninterested, ‘emotional’
people
Yes! Unequal representation (in the case of descriptive representation):
interest of lower educated would be less defended
o “How many factory workers does a politician know?”
o E.g. turnout of low-educated (how compulsory voting can help!)
Belgium does not experience growth of ‘The 1%’ due to
compulsory voting, and embedment of unions in politics, …
BUT STILL: the voter turnout is going down in Belgium,
and the compulsion is even abolished on the municipal level
When abolished, it would be in the advantage of Groen &
Open Vld, and in the disadvantage of Vlaams Belang
o Politicians and their friends are a homogeneous group
Precondition: differences in issue salience and issue position based on
schooling.
o Debate (Gilens) ↔ (Soroka & Wlezien)
o Breakthrough of populist-right parties because of issues of
immigration and crime in Europe. Better match in terms of left-
right issues (=‘easy’ issues); political dissatisfaction higher among
low- educated
o The differences are so small that we should not worry about the
over representation
E. Politician = relatively rich
Minister wage in Belgium 10,7k/month netto
Wage in relation to average income: Hungary/Norway x2, Kenya x97, Belgium
±x5
Robert Michel’s ‘Iron law of oligarchy’: all complex organizations,
regardless of how democratic they are when started, eventually develop
into oligarchies
F. Politician = professional
In multiple possible disciplines: lawyers in the West, engineers in China, soldiers
in Africa, …
‘In part because (US) Congress is filled with successful white-collar professionals,
the House is much, much richer than the people it represents, and affluent
politicians support legislation that benefits their own class at the expense of
others. Wealthier legislators are, for instance, more likely to vote to repeal the
estate tax.’ NY Times article
G. Politician = extravert, open, stable personality
Measuring personality of politicians is tricky
Self-assessment: difficult access + social desirability (manipulation)
Distant assessment (content analyses or expert evaluation): problematic
reliability + dissimilar information
But personality is a crucial predictor of election outcomes, influences leadership
popularity and politicians’ activities
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