ABSTRACT
Introduction:
The Political Science literature lacks a universally accepted criterion for evaluating the degree of professionalization among politicians. This article builds upon an index originally designed to assess the level of professionalization within the United Kingdom Parliament and subsequently refines and customizes it to suit the context of Brazilian federal deputies elected in the year 2014.
Materials and methods:
The original professionalization index consists of four key dimensions: 1) level of commitment to a political career; 2) type of professional background prior to a parliamentary career; 3) age at which individuals entered Parliament (a proxy for life experience); and 4) political ambition. After applying this index to Brazilian parliamentarians who served in the 55th legislature, we conducted comparative tests to ascertain whether parliamentarians with higher political status exhibited a higher level of political professionalization when contrasted with their peers. To identify the high-status group, we relied on the classification by the Inter-Union Department of Parliamentary Assistance (DIAP), an organization that publishes an annual list of the top 100 Heads of the National Congress.
Findings:
Our study revealed statistically significant differences in favor of the most eminent parliamentarians. DIAP-awarded parliamentarians exhibited higher levels of professionalization than their counterparts in three out of the four dimensions analyzed (commitment to a political career, life experience, and political ambition).
Discussion:
With some necessary refinements, the professionalization index has proven to be consistent and effective in gauging the disparities between DIAP-awarded parliamentarians and their counterparts. The utilization of a multidimensional model is essential insofar as it not only enables us to define who qualifies as a professional politician, but also measure the extent of professionalization of a given politician.
Keywords
political career; political professionalization; federal deputies; DIAP; descriptive statistics