Who Becomes a Politician?
Who Becomes a Politician?
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谁成为政治家？
DOI：
10.3386/w23120
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发表时间：
2017
期刊：
影响因子：
--
通讯作者：
Johanna Rickne
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Ernesto Dal Bó;Frederico Finan;Olle Folke;T. Persson;Johanna Rickne
一个民主国家能否在获得广泛代表性的同时吸引有能力的领导人？经济模型表明，搭便车的激励措施和较低的机会成本使能力较差的人在进入政治生活时具有比较优势。此外，如果精英拥有更多的人力资本，则根据能力进行选择可能会导致代表性不均衡。本文探讨了在瑞典的市政政治家和国家立法者的宇宙中的政治选择模式，使用非常丰富的数据能力特征和社会背景的整个人口。我们记录了四个新的事实，这些事实共同表征了“包容性精英政治”。首先，政治家平均比他们所代表的人口更聪明，更好的领导者。第二，这种积极的选择是存在的，即使在家庭（因此社会）背景的条件下，这表明个人能力是选择的关键。第三，社会背景的代表性，无论是以父母的收入还是职业社会阶层来衡量，都非常均匀。第四，在能力和社会代表性之间的选择充其量是一个弱的权衡，主要是由于较低（父母）的社会经济地位的政治家强的积极选择。这些事实的一个广泛含义是，民主有可能产生有能力和具有社会代表性的领导层。
Can a democracy attract competent leaders, while attaining broad representation? Economic models suggest that free-riding incentives and lower opportunity costs give the less competent a comparative advantage at entering political life. Moreover, if elites have more human capital, selecting on competence may lead to uneven representation. This paper examines patterns of political selection among the universe of municipal politicians and national legislators in Sweden, using extraordinarily rich data on competence traits and social background for the entire population. We document four new facts that together characterize an “inclusive meritocracy.” First, politicians are on average significantly smarter and better leaders than the population they represent. Second, this positive selection is present even when conditioning on family (and hence social) background, suggesting that individual competence is key for selection. Third, the representation of social background, whether measured by parental earnings or occupational social class, is remarkably even. Fourth, there is at best a weak tradeoff in selection between competence and social representation, mainly due to strong positive selection of politicians of low (parental) socioeconomic status. A broad implication of these facts is that it is possible for democracy to generate competent and socially-representative leadership.