A New Macro-Micro Approach to the Study of Political Careers:Theoretical, Methodological and Empirical Challenges and Solutions

The study of political careers is often criticised for remaining overly focused on macro-level observations. In this book I present a new approach that focuses on individual micro-level political careers. The following questions are central: • What should a new micro-level approach to the study of political careers look like? • What knowledge can the fields of sociology and political science gain from the application of a new micro-level approach to the study of political careers? • What methodological and theoretical innovations are needed to make this new approach successful? This book has three parts. First, I investigate the main roadblocks currently hampering the study of political careers and sketch the contours of an alternative approach. In the second part, I develop the methodological toolbox needed to follow this new approach. In the third part, I present three empirical studies that aim to investigate the value of the suggested approach. Here, I focus on the careers of Dutch members of parliament (1947-2012) and highlight how career transitions occur only when political candidates are able to acquire gatekeepers' approval by accumulating sufficient political human capital’

Policy or person?:What voters want from their representatives on Twitter

Social media have the potential to transform democracies as they allow for direct contact between representatives and represented. Politicians can use social media to show their policy positions but they can also give insight into their private lives. Based on survey experiments in Germany and Switzerland we show that social media messages about politicians’ private lives rather deter voters. Instead, we find that voters prefer candidates that communicate policy positions. The effect of a policy-oriented communication style on Twitter can even lead to appreciating a politician from a different party in Switzerland, which has an electoral system that gives a strong incentive to cultivate a personal vote

Political or Financial Benefits? Ideology, Tenure, and Parliamentarians' Choice of Interest Group Ties

This article develops and tests a parliamentarian‐centred decision model of the collaboration between interest groups (IGs) and parliamentarians. We posit that parliamentarians face a trade‐off when deciding on IG ties that offer them either political (policy support and votes) or financial benefits (additional income). We theorise the balance in this trade‐off to be moderated by ideology and tenure because both introduce variations in IG ties' utility across politicians. Using Swiss longitudinal data from 1985 to 2015 on 743 parliamentarians and their 5,431 IG board positions, we show that parliamentarians become more financial benefit‐seeking over time. This holds in particular if they belong to right‐leaning parties. We also find self‐imposed restrictions for new and left‐leaning parliamentarians on seeking financial benefits. This highlights that parliamentarians are responsive to their partisan constituents when building their IG tie portfolio