Electoral Participation and the Occupational Composition of Cabinets and Parliaments

This is a comparative analysis of the occupational composition of cabinets and parliaments of several countries. The following hypothesis is tested and accepted: the higher the electoral participation, the lower the proportion of political leaders recruited from business and legal occupations, but t...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:The American journal of sociology 1969-09, Vol.75 (2), p.181-192
Main Author: Wences, Rosalio
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Businesspeople
Corporate bureaucracy
Correlations
Elector/Electoral
Government cabinets
Landowners
Leader/Leaders/Leadership
Occupation/Occupations/Occupational
Parliaments
Political parties
Political/Politically/ Politicalization (see also Politics)
Politicians
Professional recruitment
Voting
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Description
Summary:This is a comparative analysis of the occupational composition of cabinets and parliaments of several countries. The following hypothesis is tested and accepted: the higher the electoral participation, the lower the proportion of political leaders recruited from business and legal occupations, but the higher the relative number recruited from other professions and from labor and party bureaucracies. It was also found that, by and large, members of parliament and cabinet ministers are not recruited from the lower middle and lower classes, even though token recruitment of the former into parliaments, but not into cabinets, was the case in most of the countries investigated.
ISSN:0002-9602
1537-5390
DOI:10.1086/224765