The ‘de-party-politicization’ of Europe’s political elites. How the rise of technocrats and political outsiders transforms representative democracy.

ongoing

How do people reach the highest echelons of politics? Traditionally, the answer has been through political parties. Yet recently, more and more politicians in Europe take office with little or no party socialization. Technocrats and political outsiders have assumed power across Europe. Even established parties appoint ever more nonpartisans as ministers. Yet we still know nothing about how this ‘de-party-politicization’ of our political elites affects – or even damages – representative democracy. To address this gap, DEPART’s theoretical innovation is to re-conceptualize the idea of ‘party control of government’. Existing work views party control as established once parties appoint individuals to office. DEPART abandons this formalistic perspective and conceives of party control as a function of the socialization of political elites into parties. The weaker this socialization, the weaker the linkage that parties provide between voters and governments. Empirically, DEPART breaks new ground by developing the first biography-based measures of party control, using the most comprehensive and most granular analysis of political careers in Europe to date (~10,000 ministers, 30 countries, 1945–2020). It also employs survey experiments to study voter responses to de-party-politicization. With these unique data, DEPART addresses two hitherto overlooked questions. First, does de-party-politicization diminish the influence of the party composition of governments on policy outcomes? This would undermine the ability of voters to affect policy through their electoral choice. Second, do weak (or absent) partisan ties among political elites reduce the ability of voters to correctly assign blame for bad government performance? This would increase the chance that parties pay no electoral price for corruption, scandals and mismanagement.