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Political elites are undergoing significant transformations. Changes in party organizations, patterns of political participation, electoral competition, and the institutional environment in which politicians operate are reshaping the pathways through which individuals enter, advance within, and remain in political office. Yet it remains unclear whether established routes to political advancement are being displaced or rather reconfigured in different ways across political systems and over time. At the same time, long-standing questions concerning who political elites are, how they are recruited, and how their backgrounds shape political representation remain central to the study of democratic politics.
This panel brings together comparative research on the recruitment, composition, circulation, and careers of political elites. It is particularly interested in how pathways into and through political office vary across countries, institutional settings, levels of government, and historical periods. Relevant contributions may examine political and professional backgrounds, party and territorial careers, patterns of circulation between levels of government, parliamentary and executive trajectories, elite professionalization, or changes in the social and political profiles of officeholders.
The panel also seeks to connect the study of elite recruitment and careers with their broader political consequences. Changes in who reaches political office, and in the pathways through which they do so, may affect patterns of representation, political responsiveness, legislative behaviour, and the distribution of political power. By bringing together studies focusing on different political systems, levels of government, and stages of political careers, the panel aims to identify both common trends and persistent cross-national variation in the transformation of political elites.
We welcome theoretically informed comparative contributions employing a variety of methodological approaches, including cross-national, longitudinal, quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-method designs. In doing so, the panel aims to strengthen dialogue between different strands of research on political elites and to advance our understanding of how contemporary political careers and elite structures are changing, and with what consequences for democratic representation.