Tom Verhelst

Political recruitment and career development of local councillors in Europe

Why do some people become and stay politicians while others do not? To gain an insight into this question one has to scrutinise the processes by which certain individuals enter, remain and move in office. In the literature on political science, these processes are usually framed by the concepts of political recruitment and career development. The answer to the initial question is related to notions such as the degree of openness of selection into the core of the political system and to whether or not who governs matters for attitudes and behaviour in office.

Between Layman and Professional? Political Recruitment and Career Development of Local Councillors in a Comparative Perspective

This article sets the framework for the subsequent special issue on political recruitment and career development of local councillors in a comparative perspective. After conceiving recruitment and career development as a funnel-like process filtering out the few from the few and leading to patterns of interpositional mobility in the political realm, the article proceeds by proposing the ideal-types of layman and professional to characterize the poles of the continuum upon which current trends in recruitment and career may be situated. Overall, these trends seem to point at a shifting structure of opportunities with predominant professionalization and partial socio-demographic democratization. Still, from a comparative perspective the extent to and the pace by which these general trends emerge are likely to be contingent upon the country, the municipality and the individual councillors studied. The comparative dataset on which the issue draws offers a unique opportunity to discern empirical patterns in the factors discussed above. The article concludes by outlining the issue and summarizing its main findings revealing a complex reality in the different phases of recruitment and career development of the contemporary councillor in Europe.

Processi e modelli di europeizzazione urbana: evidenze dalla rete EUROCITIES

The Europeanisation of cities is seen as an important condition for the latter’s successful contribution to the development of an EU urban policy. To assess the probability of this event our paper investigates the Europeanisation of the members of the EUROCITIES network, the most important trans-European city network. Using survey data gathered from 48 member cities, the study maps different elements of the cities’ Europeanisation trajectory, looks for underlying patterns and figures out how EUROCITIES membership relates to this process of urban Europeanisation. The explorative analysis results in a diverse and multi-layered picture. EUROCITIES members vary strongly with regard to their internal Europeanisation process. Whilst generally not scoring very high on minimal steps such as interest in and knowledge of EU affairs, cities are more actively involved in obtaining EU funding, networking and lobbying the EU. Furthermore, urban Europeanisation seems to work as a functional toolbox rather than a linear, cumulative process. The Europeanisation patterns that are found, for instance, include interest and knowledge as general preconditions of urban Europeanisation, a logic of networking that involves exchange schemes with other cities and EU institutions, as well as lobbying and to a lesser extent the establishment of an EU department which are connected to different other elements of urban Europeanisation. Finally, the involvement in EUROCITIES positively correlates with some of the most rewarding manifestations of the mobilisation of cities on the European scene such as inter-city policy exchange, obtaining EU funding and lobbying the EU institutions.