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，而其他人没有的问题。这项研究将检验不同的解释，为什么有些英国人有政治野心，而有些人没有，并评估哪些因素对个人政治野心的影响最大，并相互关联，影响个人的政治野心水平。我关注的四个关键解释是个人的性格类型，他们小时候了解政治的方式，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，试图理解这些是如何驱动政治野心的。除此之外，我还会考虑到个人、构成和背景的影响，比如性别、种族、年龄、教育程度，以及人们居住的地区的信息，比如他们的社会经济状况和地理位置。罗伯特·路易斯·史蒂文森说过，“政治也许是唯一一种不需要准备的职业”，然而尽管如此，似乎总是有同样的人去竞选政治职位。在过去的三十多年里，下议院被中产阶级所主导，他们受过高等教育，大部分是男性，大部分是白人，通常被称为“政治阶层”。同样的情况也出现在地方议会上。在政治幻灭程度日益加深、选民投票率不断下降的背景下，我们有必要问一问，为什么一个更多元化的群体没有把自己推举为政治家？为了回答这个关键问题，我建议从具有代表性的英国人口样本中收集有关全国政治抱负水平的高质量数据。在一个概念模型的框架内，区分有竞选政治职位的意图和实际这样做，我将使用诸如“五大”人格特征和早期生活社会化等因素的新措施来评估不同的经历和特征如何影响成为政治候选人的过程。我采用先进的统计模型来检验其他构成和背景因素，比如该地区的社会人口结构，或者你是否住在伦敦附近，是否会影响你的政治抱负水平。简而言之，这个项目将首次在英国询问为什么有些人在政治上雄心勃勃，而其他人却没有，并在这个过程中，让我们能够突出我们可以使我们的政治生活更加多样化，包容性和民主的方式。

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.