Parliamentary Elites in Central and Eastern Europe
Recruitment and Representation
Edited by Elena Semenova, Michael Edinger, Heinrich Best
To Be Published August 30th 2013 by Routledge – 240 pages
Description
Legislators are entrusted with key parliamentary functions and are important figures in the decision-making process. Their behaviour as political elites is as much responsible for the failures and successes of the new democracies as their institutional designs and constitutional reforms.
This book provides a comparative examination of representative elites and their role in democratic development in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). It argues that as the drivers of the transformation process in CEE, individual and collective parliamentary actors matter. The authors provide an in-depth analysis of representatives from eleven national parliaments and explore country-specific features of recruitment and representation. They draw on an integrated dataset of parliamentary elites for individual, party family, and parliamentary variables over the 20 years following the collapse of Communism and develop a common framework for the analysis of variations in democratisation and political professionalisation between parliaments and political parties/party families across CEE.
This unique volume will be of interest to students and scholars of comparative politics, elite research, post-communist politics, democratisation, legislative studies, and parliamentary representation.
Contents
1. Representative Elite Formation after Communism: An Introduction Elena Semenova, Michael Edinger, and Heinrich Best 2. The Czech Parliament on the Road to Professionalisation and Stabilisation Zdenka Mansfeldova 3. Homogenisation and Freezing: Hungarian MPs 1990-2010 Gabriella Ilonszki and Andras Schwarcz 4. The Polish Diet since 1989 Jacek Wasilewski and Witold Betkiewicz 5. Parliamentary Representatives in an Ethno-Liberal Democracy: Estonia Mindaugas Kuklys 6. Legislative Elites and Ethnic Democracy in Latvia after 1990 Mindaugas Kuklys 7. Lithuanian Parliamentary Elites after 1990: Dilemmas of Political Representation and Political Professionalism Irmina Matonytė and Gintaras Sumskas 8. Croatian Parliamentary Elites Vlasta Ilišin and Goran Čular 9. The ‘Waiting Room’: Romanian Parliament after 1989 Laurenţiu Ştefan and Răzvan Grecu 10. Legislative Elite Formation in Moldova: Continuity and Change William Crowther 11. Parliamentary Representation and MPs in Russia: Historical Retrospective and Comparative Perspective Oxana Gaman-Golutvina 12. Parliamentary Representation in Post-Communist Ukraine: Change and Stability Elena Semenova 13. Conclusion: Parliamentarians in Post-communist Europe – Growing Diversity or Convergence? Michael Edinger, Heinrich Best, and Elena Semenova
Author Bio
Elena Semenova is Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Jena Graduate School "Human Behaviour in Social and Economic Change" and Lecturer at the Institute of Sociology at the University of Jena (Germany). She is a member of the IPSA Research Committees "Political Elites" (RC2), the Standing Group on Central and East European Politics of the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR), and is actively involved in the international scientific network "Selection and Deselection of Political Elites" (SEDEPE).
Michael Edinger is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the University of Jena, Germany. He served as a coordinator of a research project on parliamentary elites and was actively involved in the EurElite network on Central and Eastern Europe. He belongs to the editorial board of Zeitschrift fur Parlamentsfragen, the leading German language journal on parliamentary affairs, and is a member of the Executive Council of the IPSA Research Committee "Legislative Specialists" (RCLS).
Heinrich Best is Professor and Chair of Empirical Research and Analysis of Social Structures at the Institute of Sociology, University of Jena (Germany). He served as the speaker of the Collaborative Research Centre 580 "Social Developments in Post-Socialist Societies: Discontinuities, Tradition, and Structural Formation" (Halle/ Jena, Germany) and as a Co-Chair of the scientific network "European Political Elites in Comparative Perspective" (EurElite). He is a member of the Executive Council of the IPSA Research Committee on Political Elites (RC2).
Name: Parliamentary Elites in Central and Eastern Europe: Recruitment and Representation (Hardback) – Routledge
Description: Edited by Elena Semenova, Michael Edinger, Heinrich Best. Legislators are entrusted with key parliamentary functions and are important figures in the decision-making process. Their behaviour as political elites is as much responsible for the failures and successes of the new democracies as their institutional...
Categories: Comparative Politics, Government, Eastern European Politics, European Politics, Political Leaders, Legislative Politics, Democracy