Born politicians? Testing multiple explanations of political ambition in Britain.

这个项目将回答为什么有些人有野心竞选政治职位，在任何级别，而其他人没有。这项研究将探讨为什么一些英国人在政治上有野心，而另一些人没有的不同解释，并评估哪些因素对个人的政治野心影响最大，并相互关联。我关注的四个关键解释是个人的性格类型，他们在孩提时代了解政治的方式，他们可以从政治精英那里学到什么，以及实际竞选的政治职位的可用性，试图了解这些如何驱动政治野心。除此之外，我还将考虑个人、组成和背景的影响，如性别、种族、年龄、教育以及人们生活的地区的信息，如他们的社会经济概况和地理位置。罗伯特·路易斯史蒂文森说，“政治可能是唯一一个被认为不需要准备的职业”，然而，尽管如此，似乎都是同一类人，总是竞选政治职位。在过去的30年左右的时间里，下议院逐渐被中产阶级所控制，他们受过高等教育，大部分是男性，大部分是白色人，通常被称为“政治阶层”。在地方议会上也可以看到同样的情况。在政治幻灭感日益增强、选举投票率不断下降的背景下，我们有必要问一问，为什么越来越多的人不愿意成为政治家。为了回答这个关键问题，我建议从英国人口中收集一个有代表性的样本，收集关于全国各地政治抱负水平的高质量数据。在一个概念模型的框架内，区分有意竞选政治职位和实际这样做，我将使用新的措施，如“大五”人格特质和早期生活社会化的因素，以评估不同的经验和特点如何影响的过程中出现作为一个政治候选人。我采用先进的统计模型来研究其他成分和背景因素，如该地区的社会人口概况，或者你是否住在伦敦附近，是否会影响你的政治抱负。简而言之，这个项目将首次在英国提出为什么有些人在政治上雄心勃勃，而另一些人则没有，并在这个过程中，让我们强调我们可以使我们的政治生活更加多样化，包容性和民主的方法。

This project will answer the question of why some people hold ambitions to run for political office, at any level, whilst others do not. This research will examine different explanations for why some British people are politically ambitious and others are not and assess which factors hold the greatest influence over, and interrelate, to affect individuals' levels of political ambition. The four key explanations that I focus on are the personality types of individual people, the way that they came to know about politics as a child, what they can learn about politics from political elites, and the availability of political offices to actually run for, seeking to understand how these drive political ambition. Alongside these, I will take into account individual, compositional and contextual influences, such as sex, ethnicity, age, education, and information about the areas that people live in, like their socio-economic profile and geographic location.Robert Louis Stevenson said that 'politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary', yet despite this, it seems that it is the same kind of people who always run for political office. The last thirty or so years has seen the House of Commons come to be dominated by a middle class, highly-educated, largely male and largely white group of individuals, often referred to as the 'political class'. The same story can be seen on local councils. In the context of increasing levels of political disillusionment and declining electoral turnout, it is important that we ask why a more diverse group of people aren't putting themselves forward to be politicians.To answer this crucial question, I propose to collect high-quality data from a representative sample of the British population on levels of political ambition across the country. Within the framework of a conceptual model that distinguishes between having the intention to run for political office and actually doing so, I will use novel measures of factors such as the 'Big Five' personality traits and early-life socialisation to assess how different experiences and characteristics affect the process of emerging as a political candidate. I adopt advanced statistical models to examine whether other compositional and contextual factors, such as the socio-demographic profile of the area or whether or not you live near London, affect your levels of political ambition. In short, this project will for the first time in Britain ask why some people are politically ambitious and others are not, and in the process, allow us to highlight ways in which we can make our political life more diverse, inclusive, and democratic.