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Abstract
Like national politicians, local representatives are claimed to become increasingly professionalised. The alleged professionalisation of the local councillor underpins a fundamental debate on the state of local politics. Does professionalisation entail an asymmetry in the councillor population that is necessary to govern localities in the twenty-first century, or is it hard to comply with the very nature of representative local democracy – creating an undemocratic imbalance between professionals and laymen in local government? This article seeks to contribute to the debate by outlining the extent of, and relation between, layman politics and professionalisation in the recruitment and career of Belgian local councillors. After scrutinising these elements separately in a descriptive section, both are linked in a subsequent explanatory analysis, verifying whether professionalised recruitment in a given political system results in professionalised careers. The article uses quantitative survey data gathered from a selection of 856 Belgian local councillors.
Notes
1. Since the paramount raison d’être of Belgian local democracy consists of the political expression of community identity (De Ceuninck et al. Citation2005), Belgian local governments are theoretically and formally organised as representative entities based on layman politics (Mouritzen and Svara Citation2002).
2. According to Patzelt (Citation1999), this theoretical model is likely to become the main paradigm for research on political recruitment. In this respect, studies make use of the conceptual framework and phasing of the model to structure analyses of recruitment in a given context (see e.g. Oxley and Fox Citation2004, Van Liefferinge and Steyvers Citation2008). In this article, we explicitly differentiate between the process of political recruitment and the political career (as a logical extension of the latter) to address the first two criticisms on professionalisation. In order to address the third criticism, we treat recruitment as an independent variable to study the political system in terms of professionalisation in councillor careers.
3. This sample was representative in terms of municipal size, region and socio-economic character. From 4096 councillors addressed, 856 or 21 per cent returned the questionnaire after two moments of follow-up. Response is representative in terms of socio-economic character. Councillors from Flemish and larger municipalities are slightly overrepresented, but not to the extent that it fundamentally distorts the general representativeness of research. Possible causes for the low response rate are survey length and a general survey reticence that seems typical for Southern-type countries. Indeed, this survey is part of the European research project Municipal Assemblies in European Local Governance ( http://www.maelg.eu). From this comparative perspective, most Southern-type countries in the project tend to have lower response rates (results of the comparative project are forthcoming).
4. Voter preferences, however, seem to be less important to explain bias in representativeness. Indeed, literature suggests that they do not systematically cause or reproduce selective political elites (Norris Citation1997, Rallings et al. Citation2010).
5. Councillors are entitled to occupy an office at the European level as well, but this item was not included in the questionnaire.
6. Nevertheless, the author claimed that on the long haul the differences between left and right mayors would gradually evaporate.
7. Flanders has 308 municipalities, Wallonia 262 and Brussels Capital 19.
8. Nevertheless, from a comparative point of view, Belgian municipalities are rather small with an average population around 18,000. In Brussels, the average population number is above 50,000, whilst this number is around 19,500 in Flanders and around 13,000 in Wallonia.
9. Executive functions are transferred to a selection of councillors who comprise the executive body, the Board of Mayor and Aldermen (i.e. functional dualism). These executives are elected by the council but retain their council seat and legislative mandate as well (i.e. personal monism). As such they remain theoretically under the scrutiny of – and thus subordinated to – the council. Only exceptionally are members appointed outside the council.
10. Elections and the impact of voting are not considered is this study.
11. (Starting) ‘age’ and ‘local roots’ (before mandate) were calculated based on councillors’ age, number of years lived in the municipality, and the experience in the council. In terms of motivations, councillors were asked to rate the importance of each motive before their first candidacy on a 0–4 scale. ‘Political family’ (socialisation) represents councillors who had a family member in the last two generations who had a political office. The apprenticeship variables represent computed scores for the membership of/and elective office in: trade unions and business/professional organisations, humanitarian, sport, women, environmental, ethnic minority, religious and neighbourhood organisations on the one hand; and political party on the other hand. For the gatekeeping variables, an exploratory factor analysis on a list of 12 variables resulted in two additive indices (scale 0–4): ‘support locality’ and ‘support party’. ‘Support locality’ includes support from ‘local prestigious person’, ‘trade union’, ‘local business group’, ‘women organisation’, ‘local media’, ‘the church’, ‘local association’ and ‘ethnic groups’; ‘Support party’ includes support from ‘national party organs’, ‘party fraction’, ‘party at the local level’ and ‘national politician’.
12. After granting non-EU citizens – who are residing in their municipality for at least five years – the right to vote in local elections from 2006 on, we could expect that this percentage will increase.
13. In order to decrease the sparseness of the analyses (the cross-tables of the original variables produced many empty cells), we use the recoded dummy variables (see further in the regression analysis) to calculate the associations. These dummies reduce the original variable into two categories: the professional (or most selective) group of councillors versus the other councillors. Significant associations are only mentioned insofar as they contribute to answering the research question.
14. As Petracca (Citation1991) argues, the advantages of rotation in office are manifold: not only does it guarantee the circulation of layman citizens, it also ensures the necessarily representative link between society and government whilst safeguarding society from ‘permanent’, undemocratic and unmediated governments.
15. This low rate is no real surprise since the total number of local mandates (approx. 13,000) largely exceeds the total number of supra-local mandates (approx. 1300). If we would consider the cumul des mandats the other way around, i.e. politicians at the supra-local level simultaneously holding a local mandate, high figures would stand out, confirming localities as the ‘base office’ of Belgian politicians (Pilet et al. Citation2007b).
16. Associations have been calculated based on the dummy variables that are used in the regression analyses further on in order to reduce the sparseness of the analyses.
17. We chose to re-code these variables into dummies based on their skewed frequency distributions (see Table 2), and in order to enhance the model’s parsimony and comparative strength (some variables are nominal or ordinal). Dummies are: ‘Time in office [High]’: councillors spending >60 hours per month in office, N = 130 or 16.3 per cent; ‘Incumbency [Long]’: councillors with >14 years of experience, N = 189 or 22.3 per cent; ‘Cumul des mandats [Yes]’: councillors who hold/held at least one additional mandate, N = 75 or 9.3 per cent; ‘Future ambitions [Progressive]’: councillors who hold progressive ambitions, N = 241 or 31.8 per cent.
18. These variables have been re-coded into dummies for similar reasons (skewed univariate frequency distributions, enhancing the model’s parsimony and comparative strength). Dummies are: ‘Region [Flanders]’: councillors from a Flemish municipality, N = 565 or 66.5 per cent; ‘Party position [Majority]’: councillors from a majority party, N = 518 or 63.7 per cent; ‘Party type [National party]’: councillors elected on a list of a national party, N = 616 or 72.9 per cent; ‘Party ideology [Socialist]’: councillors from a socialist party, N = 165 or 21.5 per cent; ‘Size [Populous]’ : the third of respondents from the biggest municipalities in terms of inhabitants, N = 284 or 33.7 per cent; ‘Mandate [Executive]’: councillors who hold/held an executive mandate, N = 277 or 33.3 per cent.
19. These variables have been re-coded into dummies for similar reasons (skewed univariate frequency distributions, enhancing the model’s parsimony and comparative strength). Dummies are: ‘Gender [Male]’: male councillors, N = 612 or 72.4 per cent; ‘Age [Elder]’: councillors older than 44 years at the start of their first office, N = 281 or 33.4 per cent; ‘Local roots [Strong]’: councillors residing for at least 37 years in their municipality prior to their first elective mandate in that municipality, N = 283 or 33.7 per cent; ‘Ethnic roots [Yes]’: councillors who (or whose parents) were born abroad, N = 60 or 7.1 per cent; ‘Education [University]’: councillors with a university degree, N = 543 or 64.3 per cent; ‘Profession [Talking/brokerage]’: Professional politician, civil servant/teacher and liberal/business, N = 332 or 43.3 per cent; Motivational dummies represent councillors who gave a score ‘3’ or ‘4’ (scale 0–4) to the motives ‘Citizen duty’ (N = 335 or 40.2 per cent), ‘Political interest’ (N = 576 or 68.7 per cent), ‘Party duty’ (N = 417 or 49.8 per cent) and ‘Political career’ (N = 101 or 12.1 per cent); ‘Political family [Yes]’: councillors who had a politically active family member in the last two generations, N = 270 or 32 per cent; ‘Local community apprenticeship [Strong]’: councillors active in at least one local association and its organisation, N = 417 or 56.1 per cent; ‘Political party apprenticeship [Strong]’: councillors active in the party and its organisation, N = 481 or 62.7 per cent; ‘Support locality [Strong]’: the third of councillors receiving most support from the locality in the election, N = 260 or 32.8 per cent; ‘Support party [Strong]’: the third of councillors receiving most support from the party in the election, N = 286 or 35.5 per cent.
20. Associations have been calculated based on the dummy variables that were used in the regression analyses in order to reduce the sparseness of the analyses.