Introduction: Political Careers in Multi-level Systems

Abstract

Political careers in modern democracies have been affected by important territorial reorganisations of the political system. In the newly emerging multi-level systems long-established career patterns are dissolving and new patterns are emerging. For a number of reasons these changes have not yet been adequately mapped and explained. In this introduction we are arguing for a dynamic, careers oriented approach to supersede the traditional institution-centred analysis. The aim of this special issue – and of further research in this field – is to reveal the existing links between political careers and the complex institutional opportunity structures provided by each political system. While changing institutions affect career pathways, changing career patterns, in turn, are bound to have important repercussions for the institutional and territorial order of political systems in general.

Keywords:

• Political careers
• political professionalization
• multi-level systems
• regionalization
• federalism

Notes

For an exception to the rule, see Lehmbruch (1998: 86–88), who briefly considers career patterns as a possible moment of political integration across levels of government, but then denies their relevance in the German case.

The German original could even be translated as ‘The Lawmaker’.