European Journal of Political Research 42: 223–248, 2003 223

Moving up, moving down: Political careers across territorial levels

KLAUS STOLZ
University of Goettingen, Germany

Abstract. In the sparse literature on political careers in federal systems, regional positions
are often seen as mere stepping stones on the way to federal office. But are they really? The
recent professionalization of state politics in federal systems and the regionalization of
former unitary states point to the strengthening of the regional level as a career arena in its
own right. Could this lead to the emergence of a regional political class with a set of career
interests distinct from those of national politicians? This article takes a first, comparative
look at current patterns of career movements between regional and national parliaments in
a wide range of federal and newly regionalized systems. The study shows that, contrary to
general belief, the number of deputies actually moving from the regional to federal level is
generally relatively low. While some cases show fairly integrated career structures, others
exhibit a pattern of career development in which state or regional office functions as the
main focus of political careers. The territorial structure of the political class is dependent
upon a whole range of social, cultural and institutional factors. At the same time, it is also
an important factor in the mechanics and institutional development of each federal system
in question.

Territorial order and political careers

Despite all the claims of modernization and functionalist theories (Durkheim

1964; Deutsch 1966), politics is still, to a large degree, organized on a terri-
torial basis. In fact, the territorial organization of politics has become a bur-
geoning field of academic research. An upsurge of regionalism in Europe
since the 1970s, and the increased pace of European integration, have led
to an increasing interest in territorial politics and with what has become
known as ‘multilevel governance’ (see, e.g., Marks 1993; Bullmann 1994;
König et al. 1996). Yet there is one group that has rarely featured in studies
on federalism and territorial politics. Moreover, it is the very social group that
actually populates the various levels of political institutions: professional
politicians.
In the United States, by contrast, a much longer tradition of legislative
studies has led to a large literature on professionalization and careerism. While
much of this research is concentrated on Congress and lacks any explicit

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territorial or comparative dimension, some scholars have gone beyond the

federal level to study state legislators and their careers in some detail (see,
e.g., Moncrief & Thompson 1992; Squire 1992, 1993; Mooney 1994; Rosenthal
1996, 1998). However, with their focus on legislative institutionalization, even
these studies tend to overlook the territorial aspect. Average tenure is seen as
an important indicator of the institutionalization of specific organizations, yet
the individual path of political careers between the local, regional and national
level is rarely tracked. The traditional assumption for federal systems is that
professional politicians use regional political positions as mere stepping stones
towards national office.1 This unidirectional hypothesis has never been empir-
ically tested in a comparative way. Furthermore, such a model is currently
challenged from two different directions. While the emergence of new inter-
national and supranational institutions (e.g., the European Parliament) is
offering new opportunities beyond national borders, the recent professional-
ization of regional politics has affected opportunity structures within them,
and these are the focus of this article.
This study takes a look at contemporary career patterns in a number of
federal and newly regionalized countries in order to get a comparative picture
of the movements between the regional and national level of government. It
asks whether the federal/national level is really the unquestioned apex of pro-
fessional political careers or whether it is possible to detect cases where the
region has become a career arena in its own right.
This question gains particular relevance when viewed from a political class
perspective. Unlike other approaches, the theory of political class, as devel-
oped by von Beyme (1993, 1996), Borchert and Golsch (1995) and Borchert
(1999), views professional politicians neither only as individuals nor merely as
members of a particular institution. Instead, they are attributed with the
qualities of a collective actor. The basic argument is as follows: once individ-
ual politicians start to live off politics (rather than just for politics) and thus
‘strive to make politics a permanent source of income’ (Weber 1958: 84), they
eventually become conscious of a collective interest. This collective interest in
the maintenance and advancement of their professional career turns them into
a political class (Borchert & Golsch 1995: 612). Furthermore, the ‘political
class’ hypothesis states that these politicians try to form and reform democ-
ratic institutions according to their class interest, transforming them in
Marxian terms from a ‘class in itself’ into a ‘class for itself’ (Borchert & Golsch
1995: 614), and thus constitute an often neglected, yet very powerful collective
actor (for the regional level, see also, Stolz 2001).
This class concept has been developed in the national context. There, it has
been argued, the historical processes of democratization and professionaliza-

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tion have formed a political class, defined by objective structural features,

collective interests and even common identities. Yet the professionalization of
politics is not restricted to the national level. Indeed, regional politics has
become professionalized considerably in recent decades. In many Western
democracies, regional legislative assemblies already resemble the full-time,
well-staffed and fully maintained bodies of their national counterparts. From
a political class perspective, this development may be seen as a mere exten-
sion of the national political class. From the centre to the periphery, common
professionalism and common career interests make politicians a distinct class
irrespective of the territorial location of the position they currently hold. Their
professional interests are shaped by the national political system and their
careers are focused on the centre. This interpretation corresponds to the tra-
ditional modernization theory that predicts that functional cleavages super-
sede territorial ones.
However, there is also a second possibility. Specific opportunity structures
and territorial settings could turn regional politics into a career in its own right.
Regional institutions may begin to shape the interests of regional politicians
and may indeed become the focus of their career ambitions. This would
provide a serious challenge to the territorial integrity of a national political
class and might even produce a distinct regional political class.
By and large, one would expect regional politicians who are fully integrated
into a national political class to develop a keen interest in a high degree of
uniformity and symmetry between regional and national institutions. At
the very least, their career interest is directed towards a high degree of per-
meability of regional institutions. Their upward mobility should not be
restricted by institutional boundaries. On the other hand, a regional political
class is, by definition, less concerned with keeping the institutional boundaries
of regional politics open. Its main interest is in the internal structure of the
region’s institutional system. After all, these institutions shape the oppor-
tunity structures for the maintenance and advancement of their professional
careers. In order to gain control over the institutional context of their careers,
they should be interested in a high degree of institutional autonomy for
their region – the autonomy to shape and reshape political institutions
within the confines of the region according to their career interests. Such an
interest in institutional autonomy may go hand in hand with demands for
autonomous competencies in the policy-making process (increasing the
power and prestige of regional positions), yet it is not necessarily linked to it.
Indeed, the addition of further policy portfolios could alter the time budget
and policy focus of regional positions in a way that is harmful to current career
patterns.

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Career patterns in Western democracies

Methodology

The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the territorial dimension of
political careers in multileveled Western democracies. The patterns set out
here are significant, not least because they can be taken as broad indicators
for the territorial structure of the respective political class(es). As a first
approach to the comparative study of the territorial dimension of career pat-
terns in Western democracies, this study is necessarily limited in a number of
ways. First, it is only concerned with movements from the regional to the
national level and vice versa. This is due to the author’s particular research
interest in the regional political class, but does not imply that other territorial
levels of government – local and supranational – are unimportant. Second, the
study is restricted to parliamentarians. Again, this is for pragmatic reasons
only. Thus, the analysis is based on a simple and more or less easily available
set of indicators: the share of national parliamentarians with experience in
regional parliament and the share of regional parliamentarians with experi-
ence in national parliament.2
The study uses two main indicators. The first – reflecting movement
towards the centre – is termed the ‘centripetal ratio’, and the second – reflect-
ing movement towards the region, and thus away from the centre – the
‘centrifugal ratio’. Although the political class concept explicitly includes pro-
fessional politicians in various positions and institutions (government, parlia-
ment, party, interest group), this study takes exchange patterns between
regional and national parliaments as broadly indicative of frequency and direc-
tion of career movements between these two territorial levels in general. As
parliamentarians are frequently seen as the nucleus of the political class (cf.
Borchert & Golsch 1995: 617), an analysis of their careers should provide the
best available approximate measure of its territorial integrity.
By far the most important limitation of this analysis, however, is that it com-
pares across countries and regions but not across time. Although these figures
are interpreted to some extent as a result of the professionalization of regional
politics, they do not establish any correlation or even causal relationship.
Thorough longitudinal analysis would be needed to establish any trends or
developments. However, as the career data includes members of parliament
(MPs) who entered parliament at different points in time, they can be seen as
a fairly robust reflection of current career patterns that are not likely to change
dramatically from one election to another.
A very wide approach has been taken in terms of case selection. In general,
it only makes sense to include those political systems where a politically mean-

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ingful regional level exists. This applies first and foremost to federal systems.
However, contemporary federal and regionalized systems should be seen as
part of a continuum rather than two completely separate types of territorial
organization (see, among others, Keating 1998: 114). In making the distinction
between two types of systems, the analysis is not referring to constitutional
structures, but to the sequence in which the institutionalization and profes-
sionalization of regional politics have taken place.
First of all, there are traditional federal systems. In these cases, long-
established, pre-existing regional arenas have become more or less profes-
sionalized by a process, often spreading from the centre. In Germany, for
instance, the Länder parliaments’ ongoing progress towards becoming full-
time professional bodies has accelerated since the Constitutional Court ruled
in 1975 that members have to be granted an ‘adequate standard of living’
(Friedrich 1977; Schneider 1989; Jun 1996). Similar processes of institutional
and individual professionalization have taken place in many of the American
states since the 1960s (Rosenthal, 1998). Other regional bodies, like Swiss
cantons for example, have remained largely nonprofessional. The study
includes, as federal systems, Australia, Austria, Canada, Switzerland, the
United States and West Germany.
The second type of system consists of those European countries that have
recently experienced or are still experiencing processes of regionalization (or
even federalization). Here, completely new institutions have been created that
will function as professional bodies from the beginning. Regional politics thus
undergoes a sudden professionalization concurrent with institutionalization.
The cases selected as representative of this type are: Belgium, Italy, Spain, the
United Kingdom and East Germany.3

Traditional federal systems

Centripetal ratios
The analysis will start with the traditional federal systems. How correct is the
assumption that career paths in federal systems generally lead from the
regional to the federal level? Table 1 gives us the centripetal ratios for all of
the traditional federal Western democracies mentioned above.
As we can see, ratios vary to a large degree. Switzerland conforms to the
stepping stone hypothesis of nationally integrated career paths directed
towards the centre, while the figures for Canada suggest that there are two dis-
tinct career arenas.
However, national centripetal ratios can only provide the context for
further analysis from a regional perspective. An aggregate national ratio does
not tell us anything about the range of regional ratios – regional figures might

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Table 1. Centripetal ratios in traditional federal systems

State Federal members Ex-regional members Centripetal ratio

Switzerland (2000) 200 136 68

United States (1996) 435 163 38
West Germany (1998) 518 77 15
Austria (2000) 183 25 14
Australia (2000) 148 18 12
Canada (2000) 298* 19 6

* The current Canadian House of Commons has 301 members, yet the members for Yukon,
Nunavut and the Northwest Territories do not provide the relevant biographical informa-
tion on their website.
Sources: diverse websites (details available from the author on request).

deviate quite considerably from national patterns. Therefore, national MPs

elected from each region have been looked at separately (see Table 2). The
most significant results will be discussed in this article, drawing also from other
sources where appropriate.
In Switzerland, despite its cultural and language divisions, political careers
seem to be highly integrated and hierarchically directed towards the centre.
An extremely high centripetal ratio of 68 per cent (136 of the 200 members
of the federal Nationalrat have already served in their regional Kanton
parliament) suggests that the largely nonprofessional cantonal parliaments
(Wiesli 1999) function as stepping stones for nationally orientated career
politicians and thus as a recruitment base for a completely integrated national
political class. However, one canton deserves closer attention: in Italian-
speaking Tessin, the only case where cantonal boundaries completely
coincide with cultural and language divisions, one finds one of the more pro-
fessionalized bodies and a surprising centripetal ratio of zero.
With 30 percentage points less, yet still with a ratio of 38 per cent, the
United States takes second place in the national league table. A first look at
individual state ratios shows an extreme regional variety, occupying the full
range from 0 to 100. However, none of the larger states with more than five
federal House of Representative seats falls below a rate of 17 per cent. A
look at the states with the most professionalized state legislatures (Squire
1993) reveals the fairly high centripetal ratios of 42 per cent in New York, 56
per cent in Michigan, 35 per cent in California and 60 per cent in Massachu-
setts. Taken together, these findings suggest that professional politics in the
United States is clearly orientated towards the centre and provides no fertile
ground for a distinct regional political class.

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Table 2. Centripetal ratios per region in traditional federal systems

Federal Ex-regional Centripetal

Region/state members members ratio

Switzerland* 200 136 68

Tessin 8 0 0
Zürich 34 19 56
Waadt 17 11 65
Wallis 7 5 71
Bern 27 20 74
United States* 433 163 38
Oregon 5 0 0
Arizona 6 1 17
California 52 18 35
New York 31 13 42
Michigan 16 9 56
Massachusetts 10 6 60
Alabama 7 5 71
Alaska 1 1 100
West Germany 518 77 15
Baden-Württemberg 78 5 6
Nordrhein-Westfalen 148 10 7
Schleswig-Holstein 24 2 8
Bayern 93 9 10
Niedersachsen 68 12 18
Hessen 47 9 19
Rheinland-Pfalz 34 13 38
Saarland 8 4 50
Hamburg 13 8 62
Bremen 5 5 100
Austria 183 25 14
Steiermark 25 1 4
Niederösterreich 31 2 6
Tirol 12 1 8
Oberösterreich 29 3 10
Salzburg 9 1 11
Vorarlberg 5 1 20
Wien 28 8 29
Kärnten 11 4 36
Burgenland 5 2 40

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Table 2. Continued.

Federal Ex-regional Centripetal

Region/state members members ratio

Australia 148 18 12
Northern Territories 1 0 0
Queensland 27 1 4
Victoria 37 3 8
South Australia 12 1 8
Western Australia 14 2 14
New South Wales 50 9 18
Tasmania 5 1 20
Australian Capital Territory 2 1 50
Canada 298 19 6
Alberta 26 0 0
New Brunswick 10 0 0
British Columbia 34 1 3
Quebec 75 4 5
Ontario 103 6 6
Nova Scotia 11 1 9
Manitoba 14 2 14
Saskatchewan 14 2 14
Prince Edward Island 4 1 25
Newfoundland 7 2 29

* Only a selection of regions is reproduced here. Figures for other regions are available on
request from the author.
Sources: see Table 1.

Switzerland and the United States clearly stand out among our cases for
their extreme hierarchical integration. We find much lower centripetal ratios
in the other systems, albeit along with considerable regional diversity. Career
structures in West Germany, with its highly integrated party system (often seen
as counteracting federalism, see Lehmbruch 1998), have long been depicted
as integrated and hierarchically orientated towards the federal level. Yet in
recent decades, the centripetal ratio has decreased quite significantly, from 25
per cent in 1965 (Borchert & Golsch 1999) to 15 per cent in 1998. The main
cause for this development has to be the drastic professionalization of the
Landtage (regional parliaments) since the 1970s (Schneider 1989; Jun 1996),
making regional politics as a separate career option more attractive. Not

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surprisingly, the highest ratios are to be found in the less professionalized

city-states (Bremen: 100 per cent, Hamburg: 62 per cent) and the smaller
Flächenstaaten (non-city-states) of the West (Saarland: 50 per cent, Rhineland-
Palatinate: 38 per cent)4, while the larger western Länder are well below
the national aggregate (Baden-Württemberg: just 6 per cent, North-Rhine
Westphalia: 7 per cent, Bavaria: 10 per cent). While these findings hardly con-
stitute convincing evidence for the existence of regional political classes, it
looks as if the national political class in Germany is losing its strong hier-
archical career orientation towards the federal level.
Austria scores a 14 per cent centripetal ratio. Its range of regional cen-
tripetal ratios extends from 40 per cent in the small Burgenland down to 4 per
cent in Steiermark, with the capitol region of Vienna closely integrated at 29
per cent. Austria’s regional parliaments are said to provide only for low levels
of professionalization. Yet one recent study has illustrated that regional politi-
cians spend a longer time in political office on average than their national
counterparts. The fact that so far only one leader of a regional government
has left his position in favour of a federal career further strengthens a dualis-
tic view of career structures in Austria (see Dachs et al. 1995: 643).
Australia is another long-established federal democracy with an integrated
party system and yet an even lower centripetal ratio (12 per cent). There, the
biggest state, New South Wales, seems to be well integrated (a ratio of 18 per
cent), while Victoria (8 per cent) and especially Queensland (4 per cent) show
much lower ratios.
Canada, with its dual type of federalism and its fragmented party system,
is not surprisingly at the bottom of the table. Only 6 per cent of federal MPs
served in provincial legislatures before entering the House of Commons.
Again, the highest ratios can be found in the smaller (in terms of population)
and politically less professionalized provinces (Prince Edward Island, New-
foundland), while the two most populated provinces, Quebec and Ontario,
with the most professionalized legislatures by far (Dyck 1996: 17), show a ratio
of 5 and 6 per cent, respectively. It is interesting to note that the centripetal
ratio of Quebec, despite its strong nationalist cleavage, does not much differ
from that in Ontario. However, the lowest ratios can be found in British
Columbia (3 per cent), New Brunswick and Alberta (both without a single
former provincial MP in their federal delegation). Thus the structure of the
political class in Canada seems to reflect the structural divisions (mainly the
party system) and not the basic cultural division of Canadian federalism.

Centrifugal ratios
However, centripetal ratios do not tell us the whole story. What if we find con-
siderably high numbers of politicians moving in the opposite direction? While

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movement between the two arenas speaks for integration, the direction of
these movements might be seen as an indicator for hierarchy. High levels of
movement away from the centre towards the regional level (what will be called
here, the ‘centrifugal ratio’) thus point to high attractiveness of regional office
compared to national positions. Such a pattern would contradict the general
stepping stone hypothesis and is not expected in traditional federal systems.
As a compilation of centrifugal ratios for all the regions mentioned above
would pose immense practical problems (numbers of regional parliamentari-
ans, availability of political biographies) a selection of cases will be discussed.
The selection of cases for analysis reflected practical requirements. It was pos-
sible to collect data from all countries except Switzerland, yet the choice of
regions was sometimes determined by the availability of political biographies.
Nevertheless, the empirical data presented (see Table 3) does tell us something
about the territorial career orientation of regional politicians in traditional
federal systems.
Indeed, as Table 3 shows, traditional federal democracies show nearly no
career movement towards the regions. The most extreme case is the United
States, where even the large and highly professionalized state legislatures
of California and New York do not contain one single member with prior
experience in the federal House of Representatives. This suggests a clear
hierarchy of offices directed towards the federal level. Given the low profes-
sionalization and the even higher centripetal ratios of its cantons, if data were
available one would expect Switzerland to follow a similar pattern. Such a
hierarchy also exists in the West German and Austrian cases, albeit to a lesser
extent. Centripetal ratios of 10 and 16 per cent contrast with centrifugal ratios
of just 1 per cent in Bavaria and Lower Saxony. While the capital region of
Vienna, Austria reaches a centrifugal ratio of 4 per cent, its centripetal ratio
of 29 per cent shows that it can hardly be considered a challenge to the hier-
archical pattern. Even the least centripetal federal systems, Australia and
Canada, do not show high centrifugal ratios. The best example in Canada of
the lack of any significant career movement towards the regional level is
Quebec, where the provincial parliament, despite a high level of professional-
ization, a strong regionalist cleavage and its distinct ‘national’ identity, has not
attracted more than two federal MPs. However, lower levels of centripetal
ratios mean that in Canadian provinces and in some Australian states (i.e.,
Queensland) career patterns are less or even nonhierarchical with very little
movement at all between federal and regional level. This pattern is exempli-
fied in Alberta with zero movement in both directions. These cases come
closest to the ideal-type of a completely separate regional political class, exist-
ing parallel to the national one.

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 Table 3. Centrifugal ratios of selected regions in traditional federal systems

Centrifugal Regional Ex-federal Centripetal Federal Ex-regional

Region Country ratio MPs MPs ratio MPs MPs

Tasmania Australia 3 35 1 20 5 1
Queensland Australia 2 89 2 4 27 1
South Australia Australia 0 47 0 8 12 1
Wien Austria 4 115 5 29 28 8
Oberösterreich Austria 2 56 1 10 29 3
Burgenland Austria 0 36 0 40 5 2
Prince Edward Island Canada 5 19 1 25 4 1
Quebec Canada 2 125 2 5 75 4
Alberta Canada 0 83 0 0 26 0
Ontario Canada 0 103 0 6 103 6
Bayern Germany 1 204 3 10 89 9
Niedersachsen Germany 1 161 2 18 68 12
California USA 0 80 0 35 52 18
political careers across territorial levels

New York USA 0 150 0 42 31 13

North Dakota USA 0 98 0 100 1 1

Sources: see Table 1.

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233
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Career patterns
Thus two different types of career patterns in traditional federal democracies
can be identified. The first one is nationally integrated, with unidirectional
career paths leading from regional to national office. This is a reflection of the
classical understanding of careers in traditional federal systems. Regional
office functions as a mere springboard to higher (federal) office. However, such
a clear-cut pattern can be found only in Switzerland, most American states and
a number of regions from other countries. In general, the share of national par-
liamentarians with prior experience in regional parliaments (the centripetal
ratio) is rather low. Whether this is a stable, long-term feature or a current trend
linked to the professionalization of regional politics (as the German case sug-
gests) is difficult to discern without a detailed longitudinal analysis. The second
type of career pattern consists of two separate career paths that are pursued
alternatively. Politicians either serve in their region or at the national level, yet
with very little exchange between the two political arenas. While Alberta
(Canada) provides an extreme example of this type, with no movement
between provincial and federal parliament at all, many more cases in tradi-
tional federal systems (especially, but not only, in Canada) with centripetal and
centrifugal exchange rates well below 10 per cent can be found as well.

Newly regionalized/federalized systems

Centripetal ratios
How do newly regionalized and newly federalized systems fit into these career
types? A first look shows them with centripetal ratios close to most traditional
federal systems (making Switzerland and the United States even more excep-
tional). The highest ratio is held by Spain (16 per cent), followed by Belgium
(13 per cent), Italy (10 per cent) and the East German Länder (6 per cent).
The high figure for Spain, above that of West Germany and Austria, might
come as a surprise given the strong political autonomy and professionaliza-
tion of its regional parliaments and the regionalist aspirations of its historic
nations. A look at regional ratios shows a rather wide range (from 0 to 60 per
cent) among the scores of Spain’s Autonomous Communities. While some of
the non-regionalist regions show rather high scores, two of the three historic
nations with strong regionalist cleavage are in the lower ranks. Compare, for
example, Cantabria (60 per cent) and Aragon (54 per cent), on the one hand,
with the Basque country (5 per cent) and Galicia (8 per cent), on the other.
At the same time, Catalonia, the third historic nation that is often seen as the
most autonomous Spanish region, shows a relatively high level of integration
(a score of 15 per cent, and thus a higher ratio than the larger West German
Länder).

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 political careers across territorial levels 235

Table 4. Centripetal ratios per region in newly regionalized/federalized systems

Federal Ex-regional Centripetal

Region/state members members ratio

Spain 353 56 16
Valenciana 31 0 0
Pais Vasco 19 1 5
Canarias 14 1 7
Galicia 25 2 8
Madrid 43 4 9
Andalucia 62 6 10
Castilla La Mancha 20 2 10
Cataluna 46 7 15
Murcia 9 2 22
Rioja 4 1 25
Extremadura 11 3 27
Castilla y Leon 30 9 30
Asturia 9 3 33
Navarra 5 2 40
Islas Baleares 7 3 43
Aragon 13 7 54
Cantabria 5 3 60
Belgium 150 20 13
Flanders Parliament 80 4 5
Brussels Capital Region 22 5 23
Wallonian Parliament (Reg) 48 11 23
Italy 630 66 10
Val d’Aosta 1 0 0
Veneto 49 1 2
Lombardia 98 4 4
Piemonte 48 2 4
Liguria 19 1 5
Marche 16 1 6
Abruzzo 14 1 7
Toscana 39 3 8
Puglia 45 4 9
Campania 62 6 10
Trentino-Alto Adige 10 1 10
Umbria 9 1 11
Siciliana 55 8 15
Friuli-Venezia Giulia 13 2 15

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Table 4. Continued.

Federal Ex-regional Centripetal

Region/state members members ratio

Lazio 57 9 16
Emilia Romagna 43 7 16
Sardegne 18 4 22
Molise 4 1 25
Basilicata 7 2 29
Calabria 23 8 35
East Germany 126 8 6
Thüringen 25 1 4
Sachsen 37 2 5
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern 15 1 7
Sachsen-Anhalt 26 2 8
Brandenburg 23 2 9

Sources: see Table 1.

The importance of the historical context and the limitation of a purely static
comparison like this become obvious in the following case. With a centripetal
ratio of 13 per cent, Belgian career structures seem quite similar to those of
most other federal countries. However, put into the perspective of Belgium’s
federalization process, one reaches a completely different conclusion. Before
the regional parliaments of Flanders and Wallonia became directly elected
bodies in 1995 (the third regional parliament, Brussels, has been directly
elected since 1989), they were both made up exclusively of members of the
federal parliament. Just five years later, one could expect very high numbers
of federal MPs with experience in one of the two bodies. The actual ratio of
13 per cent must thus be seen as very low indeed. Further, in Flanders (cen-
tripetal ratio of 5 per cent), very few of those dual-mandate MPs continue to
serve in the federal parliament.
A rather low centripetal ratio (just 10 per cent) can also be found in Italy.
With the lowest scores in the heartland of the Lega Nord (Veneto: 2 per cent,
Lombardia: 4 per cent, Piemont: 4 per cent, Liguria: 5 per cent), this result sup-
ports the observations of scholars of Italian regionalism who have recently
spoken of the ‘growth of a strong class of semi-professional politicians
(MPs, mayors, aldermen, local councilors)’ within the regionalist leagues
(Tarchi 1999: 135) and even generally about the ‘emergence at regional level
of a new class of politicians not so interested in a cursus honorum leading up

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to the national political scene’ (Desideri 1995: 74). Compared to Spain or

Belgium, Italy’s regions, however, have lower levels of political autonomy and
professionalization.
A very interesting case is provided by the new Länder in Germany. The
very low centripetal ratios can be explained partly by the very low age of the
new regional bodies. Thus, the first cohorts of federal MPs from these Länder
could not possibly have had much experience in regional parliaments (as there
were none in the former GDR). However, whether these figures will rise sig-
nificantly over time remains to be seen. After all, the newly established bodies
are fully professionalized and thus highly attractive. Furthermore, there are
still significant differences between eastern and western Länder, not only as
regards political culture but also party systems.

Centrifugal ratios
The main difference between traditional federal systems and their newly
regionalized/federalized counterparts is their respective centrifugal ratios (see
Table 5). While the former show nearly no movement towards the regional
level, the selected regions from the newly regionalized/federalized systems
show much higher centrifugal ratios. The most extreme case is Belgium. There,
the extremely high centrifugal ratios of Flanders (42 per cent) and Wallonia
(33 per cent) are caused by the federalization process. When the introduction
of directly elected regional parliaments with extended political responsibili-
ties forced the dual-mandated MPs of 1995 to choose in which body they
would serve, a large majority of them decided to continue their political career
on the regional level. In this way, Belgian federalization produced quite
uncommon career paths hierarchically structured towards the regional level.
While the extremity of its centrifugal ratios will most probably remain a tem-
porary phenomenon (as the formerly dual-mandated MPs will die out sooner
or later), the hierarchical career structure may well remain a stable factor of
Belgian politics. It will be interesting to see whether in the long run this will
lead to a separation of career paths or whether the federal parliament will be
used as stepping stone towards predominantly regional ambitions. In any case,
Belgium, especially Flanders, seems to be the place to look for the emergence
of a regional political class.
Quite high centrifugal ratios are also to be found in post-devolution
Britain. Nearly one-fifth of Scotland’s first cohort of regional MPs has already
served in Westminster, with most of them moving directly from a current
mandate (12 per cent; see Stolz 1999). In spite of its lower level of autonomy
(the Assembly is only granted secondary legislation), the Welsh Assembly still
shows a ratio of 15 per cent. Again, it remains to be seen whether these
centrifugal ratios are here to stay and how the respective centripetal ratios

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develop. However, the strong regional identity, the distinct quality of the
regional political arena together with the high level of professionalization of
these parliaments suggest that neither the Welsh Assembly nor the Scottish
Parliament will be confined to mere springboards for United Kingdom office.
In fact, at least in the Scottish case, hierarchical career paths directed towards
the regional level might develop (for a more detailed analysis of the political
class in Scotland, see Stolz 1999).
A look at centrifugal ratios helps qualify the first impression given in the
analysis of centripetal ratios with regard to the autonomous communities in
Spain. While the relatively high centrifugal ratios support our general finding
of frequent movement between the regional and the national arena, they also
suggest that these movements do not follow strict hierarchical patterns in all
cases. In Catalonia, for example, the surprisingly high 15 per cent centripetal
ratio is nearly matched by a centrifugal ratio of 10 per cent – the highest score
for any regional parliament apart from the newly established bodies in
Belgium and the United Kingdom. This is neither the result of an exceptional
election, nor simply the residue from an extremely high share in the founding
cohort of the Catalan parliament (see Stolz 1999). Instead, it reflects an estab-
lished career path leading from local office towards the Spanish Cortes and
then to the Catalan Parliament that exists parallel to the more traditional path
in which the Catalan Parliament acts as a stepping stone to national office. It
would be interesting to see whether similar centrifugal ratios, and thus similar
career paths, exist in Galicia and the Basque country, the other two historic
nations of Spain that show even lower centripetal ratios.
The lowest centrifugal ratios amongst newly regionalized systems can be
found in Italy and East Germany – at least if one takes into account the regions
that are included in this analysis. However, low centrifugal ratios should come
as no surprise in Italy as lower levels of autonomy and professionalization
seriously diminish the attractiveness of regional office for national politicians.
Together with the rather low centripetal ratios, this points to very little move-
ment between regional and national level at all. It is striking, though perhaps
completely coincidental, that the region with the highest centrifugal ratio and
the least hierarchical career pattern (with a 3 per cent centrifugal and a 4 per
cent centripetal ratio) is Piedmont, in the heartland of northern regionalism.
The low centrifugal ratios of the five new Länder in East Germany can be
explained within the specific context of German unification. Unlike Belgium
or the United Kingdom, where national MPs went to the newly established
regional parliaments, East Germany’s Länder had no federal MPs to draw on.
However, the low centrifugal ratios of the fully professionalized western
Länder parliaments do not suggest that these figures would rise significantly
in the long run.

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 Table 5. Centrifugal ratios per region in newly regionalized/federalized systems

Centrifugal Regional Ex-federal Centripetal Federal Ex-regional

Region Country ratio MPs MPs ratio MPs MPs

Flanders Belgium 42 118 49 5 80 4

Wallonia Belgium 33 75 25 23 48 11
Scotland UK 19 129 24
Wales UK 15 60 9
Cataluna Spain 10 135 13 15 46 7
Aragon Spain 9 67 6 54 13 7
Andalucia Spain 6 109 6 10 62 6
Valenciana Spain 3 89 3 0 31 0
Piemonte Italy 3 60 2 4 48 2
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Germany 3 71 2 7 15 1
Brandenburg Germany 2 89 2 9 23 2
Sardegne Italy 2 55 1 22 18 4
Siciliana Italy 0 91 0 15 55 8
political careers across territorial levels

Emilia Romagna Italy 0 50 0 16 43 7

Asturia Spain 0 45 0 33 9 3

Sources: see Table 1.

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239
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Career patterns
Some of the Spanish Autonomous Communities (Asturia) and Italian regions
(Sardegne) with high centripetal and low centrifugal ratios seem to conform
to the classical hierarchical, nationally integrated pattern identified in tradi-
tional federal systems. Other cases, like Valenciana (Spain) and Piedmont
(Italy) have rather low and nonhierarchical exchange rates fitting neatly into
the separate careers pattern of traditional federal systems, with the new
German Länder Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern somewhere in
between. Yet among newly regionalized or federalized systems, there are two
further patterns. In the third pattern, career paths are also nonhierarchical, yet
they are highly integrated with frequent movement in both directions. This
type is very rare. It was only detected in Wallonia (Belgium), where an
extremely high centrifugal ratio (33 per cent) exceeds considerable centripetal
movement (23 per cent), and, to a lesser extent, in Catalonia (Spain).5 It seems
noteworthy that we find both strong regionalist pressure and traditions of
accommodation with central government (or even its dominance) in both
cases. The fourth and last pattern is a mirror image of the first hierarchical
pattern. Regions in this category show more or less unidirectional career paths,
yet in these cases, they are directed towards the regional rather than the
national level. This pattern is clearly restricted to a few regionalist cases with
newly established, fully professionalized regional parliaments, most notably
Flanders (Belgium), and Scotland and Wales (United Kingdom) (in the latter
two cases centripetal movement has not been possible yet).
Thus, taking traditional federations and newly regionalized systems
together we can identify four different types of career patterns. Adapting
Borchert’s (2001) typology of political careers in multi-level systems to our
purpose, we may systematize them as in Figure 1.
The last two types must be treated with caution. As the cases that conform
to these types are all very new, it is hard to tell whether in the long run they
are really here to stay. Over time the new regional parliaments may become
more important as recruitment reservoirs for federal office, thus increasing
centripeftal ratios. Unidirectional career patterns (type 4) may thus become
nondirectional (type 3). On the other hand, the often very high numbers of
the first intake from federal parliaments into a newly established regional
parliament could disappear, leading to much lower ‘regular’ centrifugal ratios.
Types based on high centrifugal ratios (types 3 and 4) might lose their em-
pirical cases to types 1 or 2. The complete lack of any significant centrifugal
ratio in the regions of traditional federal system, even in the most regionalist
cases like Quebec, points towards such a development. However, this is far
from certain. After all, the Catalan Parliament, for example, has produced
centrifugal ratios of around 10 per cent for 20 years now (cf. Stolz 1999).

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 political careers across territorial levels 241

High Low
centripetal centripetal
ratios ratios

(1)
(2)
Unidirectional from
Low Alternative careers
region to centre
centrifugal
ratios
For example: For example:
New York (42/0) Alberta (0/0)
California (35/0) Queensland (4/2)

(3) (4)
Nondirectionally Unidirectional from
High integrated centre to region
centrifugal
ratios For example: For example:
Wallonia (23/33) Flanders (5/42)
Catalonia (15/10) Scotland (-/19)

Figure 1. Four types of career patterns in federal and regionalized systems.

Explanations and implications: Towards a regional political class?

The picture this initial comparative analysis has to offer is necessarily incom-
plete and sometimes blurred. Hence, it has to be complemented by future
research widening the scope (including longitudinal analysis, other political
institutions, and other countries and territorial levels) and refining methods
and instruments (compiling data on personal motivation through interviews)
to address questions like: How do career patterns change over time? Is cen-
trifugal movement linked to promotion from the federal backbench to the
regional government? Are these career movements voluntary or electorally
induced and what are the motives behind them?
This first survey has produced some straightforward and far from self-
evident results. First of all, career patterns differ widely not only between
countries, but also between regions within the same country. Taken together,
the figures show that the stepping stone pattern of unidirectional movement
from the region to the federal level is far from dominant; on the contrary, evi-
dence points towards the emergence of regions as distinct career arenas in
many cases.
How should we account for these results and what are their implications?
Although this study does not claim to provide any causal explanations, the dis-

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cussion of these cases has revealed a number of factors that would have to be
included in such an analysis. Among the more important factors are: the struc-
ture of the party system and the internal organization of parties, geographical
distance, the existence of a regionalist cleavage, the degree of professional-
ization of regional institutions and, last but not least, the sequence in which
institutionalization and professionalization of regional politics has occurred.
While no single factor can account for the different patterns of career move-
ments, we have to look for specific combinations of different factors, and even
for some functional equivalents. Doing so we may follow Schlesinger’s (1966)
distinction between opportunity and ambition. Individual careers, and thus
also aggregated career patterns, are shaped by both.
Although the basic opportunity structure largely is determined by institu-
tional features such as the party system, the number of vacant positions, fre-
quency of elections and turnover, the actual opportunity for each politician to
reach a specific position depends on his or her individual resources. A previ-
ously held political position – a regional or a national mandate – may increase
these resources considerably through the experience, contacts and public
profile it brings. Yet, neither the resources gained through regional or national
mandates, nor the resources needed to campaign for national or regional office
are exactly the same in each of our political systems. Where regional mandates
provide politicians with high levels of resources necessary for success in
seeking national office, this may help explain high centripetal ratios. In turn,
high centrifugal ratios are only possible where a national mandate provides
resources relevant for a regional campaign.
However, an argument based on differing resources can clearly provide
only half of the answer. Moving into a specific political position not only
requires the opportunity, but also the ambition to do so. Not all positions are
equally attractive to all politicians in terms of power, prestige, payment and
privileges. There is hierarchy of offices, although the exact pattern is hard to
establish and it may vary from person to person. The ambition to step up the
territorial ladder (in order to increase one’s constituency or the jurisdiction
one’s legislature covers) is not a given, as Francis & Kenny (2000: 3) argue,
but is dependent upon various factors. There are cases where a move from the
national to the regional level is considered as progress in a political career. In
order to account for our varying exchange ratios, we might ask what makes a
regional mandate attractive for national MPs and national mandates for
regional MPs.
The structure of the party system and the internal organization of major
parties seems closely linked to the opportunity part of the argument. In a
country with a stable homogenous party system and highly integrated national
parties, a winnable national seat, or a promising place on the party list, may

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 political careers across territorial levels 243

be a reward for good regional service. This might explain the high centripetal
ratio in West Germany in the 1960s, while the tentative regionalization of the
party system in Germany (see Kropp & Sturm 1999) partly explains its
decrease and the considerably lower figures in East Germany. In a similar way,
regional parties’ control over political careers in Switzerland from the local to
the national level contributes to its high centripetal ratio (see Wiesli 1999;
Galonska 1999). The extremely low levels of centripetal movement in Canada
can be linked to the general separation between provincial and federal parties.
A provincial mandate thus cannot be seen as providing an important resource
in a campaign for a national seat. But, why is it that the United States, with its
weak and localized parties and a nomination process based on primaries, is
closer to Switzerland than to Canada? The answer might be found in a func-
tional equivalent for a party-controlled nomination that is peculiar to the
United States. In the United States, experience in the state legislature guar-
antees a high degree of name recognition and a well-established network of
financial support, arguably the two most important resources for nomination
and electoral success on the federal level (Jacobson 1983).
Geography may affect resources in a more indirect way. Distance from the
regional to the national capital may play a role in providing (or prohibiting)
regular informal access to national party hierarchy, which, in turn, can be an
important asset in the selection process for a national seat. This would only
affect deputies with strong and nationally integrated parties – thus the counter
examples of Ontario (Canada) and the United States do not contradict the
argument. Australian states closest to the national capital have the highest
centripetal ratio (Australian Capital Territory, New South Wales, Victoria,
Tasmania) while Vienna is clearly at the top of the table of centripetal ratios
in Austria. High centripetal rates can be found nearly everywhere in the geo-
graphically small Switzerland. In general, it can be argued that the more cam-
paign resources (in either form) are provided by regional office, the better the
chance of regional parliamentarians running for national office and, thus,
ceteris paribus, the higher the centripetal ratio of ex-regional deputies in
national parliaments. However, such a resource-based perspective disregards
the role ambition plays.
Two of the most important factors that strengthen the attractiveness of
regional parliaments vis-a-vis national parliaments are the existence of a
strong regional identity (expressed in an active regionalist cleavage) and high
levels of professionalization. Without a regional identity, politicians’ motiva-
tion to live for politics tends to be dominated by a national perspective.
Without high levels of professionalization, their opportunity to live off poli-
tics, and to pursue a professional political career, remains restricted to the
national arena (for a more detailed account of this argument, see Stolz 2001).

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Each of these conditions provide some motivation to (re)direct political career

ambitions towards the regional level and thus tends to decrease centripetal
ratios and/or even induce some centrifugal movement.
Regions with a strong regionalist cleavage and/or strong regional identity
tend to produce rather low centripetal ratios, as seen in the Basque Country
and Galicia (Spain), Flanders (Belgium), Quebec (Canada) and even by north-
ern Italian and eastern German regions. The only two exceptions to this
tendency reflect highly specific conditions – Wallonia (Belgium), with a centri-
petal ratio of 23 per cent, contains many former dual-mandated MPs, and
Catalonia (Spain) (15 per cent), with its strong impact on national politics and
government. The fact that the rare cases with high centrifugal ratios (career
types 3 and 4) almost exclusively consist of regions with a strong regionalist
cleavage underlines the impact of regional identity. Yet while a regional
cleavage may be necessary to produce centrifugal movement, some of the
northern Italian regions and especially Quebec (strong nationalist movement
yet a centrifugal ratio of just 2 per cent) show that it is certainly not sufficient.
The professionalization argument seems validated by the low centripetal
movement in the strongly professionalized German Länder parliaments and
by the strong centripetal movement from some of the least professionalized
regional bodies in Switzerland and Italy. The fact remains, however, that many
highly professional regional legislatures like California and New York show
very high centripetal ratios and no centrifugal movement at all. Thus profes-
sionalization alone does not lead to regionally directed career patterns.
Finally, attention should be drawn to the sequence of professionalization
and institutionalization in regional politics. In traditional federal systems,
regional institutions have always offered opportunities to fulfill regional politi-
cal ambitions directly. However, because of the lack of professional positions
on the regional level, a move from the national parliament had long been syn-
onymous with moving out of professional politics. Thus we find very low rates
of centrifugal movement. In the last couple of decades, the professionalization
of regional politics may have rendered regional careers more attractive, yet
this has not provided additional opportunities for outsiders, not even for
national MPs, on a large scale. This is in stark contrast to decentralizing unitary
systems where the accompanying institutionalization and professionalization
of regional politics offered an opportunity for all those national politicians
whose regional ambitions had been suppressed by the old territorial structure.
In some cases, this has resulted in significant centrifugal movements. These
may prove temporary as politicians may join regional parliaments without first
having been elected for national office. On the other hand, structural condi-
tions such as high turnover rates could stabilize this pattern of centrifugal

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 political careers across territorial levels 245

movements and provide a model for successful career building – Spain might
be an example for such a development.
In any case, current centrifugal movements towards some of the newly
established regions tell us something about the attractiveness of these parlia-
ments. As the cases of Flanders, Wallonia, Scotland, Wales and Catalonia show,
it is the combination of professionalization and the existence of a strong
regionalist cleavage that directs career ambitions towards the regional level.
Although national MPs were certainly in a good position to take advantage
of these new opportunities in all regionalized systems, they did so in signifi-
cant numbers only where regional parliaments provide for political careers
with levels of material rewards similar to national parliaments.
The implications of these results become clearer when we return to the
theory of political class. What do the career patterns identified mean with
regard to the territorial integration of the political class in Western democra-
cies? First of all, the findings suggest that national political classes are far less
territorially integrated than presumed. It is only the first type of career pat-
terns (see Figure 1) that clearly points to regional politicians as part of a fully
integrated national political class. Yet, although centripetal ratios are higher
than centrifugal ratios in all but a few cases, they are nevertheless much lower
than expected for a completely integrated political class. The three other types
depict the regional level as a career arena of its own and thus reveal some ele-
ments of territorial distinctiveness between regional and national politicians.
These preliminary results should be taken as a starting point for a research
agenda that would have to include more refined studies of the historical
development (through longitudinal analysis) and the territorial dimension (by
including other institutions and levels of government) of career patterns, as
well as of long-term institutional developments. Linking these areas of study
through the concept of ‘political class’, we can identify critical junctures where
institutional change has been either the cause or the consequence of changes
in career patterns.
In traditional federal systems we find very different (e.g., Switzerland
versus Canada), yet presumably also very stable patterns. After all, they are
the result of long-term processes in which the career ambitions of the politi-
cal class and the opportunities offered by the institutional structure have been
able to adapt to each other. Newly regionalized systems, however, are at a
critical juncture: A mutual adaptation between opportunity and ambition has
yet to take place. New career paths are developing, and institutional settings
in their early stages are still very flexible. Regional politicians might thus be
in a particularly good position to shape this institutional context according to
their own career ambitions. As this look at career patterns across Western

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democracies has shown, it is in newly regionalized countries that a regional

political class is most likely to emerge. If so, its vested interest in strong and
autonomous regional institutions could become a crucial factor in the institu-
tional development and mechanics of the territorial order in question.

Acknowledgements

This article is part of a study currently being conducted in the context of a

research group on ‘Politics as a Profession’ at the Centre for European and
North American Studies at the Georg-August University Goettingen. I would
like to thank both the Volkswagen-Stiftung for the funding and the group
members for their valuable input into this study. A first version of this article
was presented at the triennial Congress of the International Political Science
Association, Quebec City, 1–5 August 2000. I am grateful for the constructive
criticism from Jens Borchert and an anonymous referee on a draft version of
this article. Thanks also to J. Erika von Rautenfeld for polishing up my English.

Notes

1. Francis & Kenny (2000: 3), in their recent work on political careers, even state that politi-
cians always strive to increase their territorial jurisdiction.
2. Since not all systems are bicameral, and as upper chambers often explicitly function as
institutionalized representation of territorial interests, analysis has been restricted to
lower chambers only.
3. Unlike Germany’s old western Länder, the new eastern Länder established in 1990
cannot be included in an analysis of traditional federal systems. The five new eastern
Länder are therefore categorized under the newly federalized systems. The current Land
Berlin, partly old institution and partly new creation, is excluded from the analysis
completely.
4. Another explanation for the high centripetal ratio of smaller regions can be seen in their
relatively large reservoir of regional parliamentarians compared to relatively few federal
seats (the size of regional parliaments is far less proportional to population-size than the
number of regional seats in the federal parliament).
5. In Catalonia the frequency of movement between the two arenas can even be detected
on the individual level. One deputy, Maciá Alavedra i Moner, even managed to move
three times between Madrid and Barcelona, serving twice in both parliaments.

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Address for correspondence: Klaus Stolz, Centre for European and North American Studies,
University of Goettingen, Humboldtallee 3, D-37073 Goettingen, Germany
Tel.: ++49 551 398636; Fax: ++49 551 399788; E-mail: kstolz@uni-goettingen.de

© European Consortium for Political Research 2003