Too Bad You Never Knew Ace Hanna

Andreas Jungherr (2009) ‘You Take the High Road and I’ll Take the Low Road: 4 Ways how Political Leaders find into Politics’. Paper presented at the 5th ECPR General Conference: European Consortium for Political Research, Potsdam, Germany on 10 – 12 September 2009.

Abstract: To get a clearer grasp on the motives and ambitions of today’s political leaders it is important to understand the motivations that drove them to politics in the first place. For most career-politicians their political life begins in the youth organizations of their respective parties. But what brings them there remains unclear. This paper provides four conjectures on what lets later day political leaders join a political party. This paper is based on a qualitative study of political leadership in political youth organizations. For this study 19 interviews with young politicians form Hesse, Germany were conducted who executed leadership positions in the youth organizations of their respective parties. During these interviews patterns emerged with regard to the motives and early experiences the present day politicians attributed to their early days in their respective parties. These patterns show 4 ways into politics: 1. Activation through a friend or family member; 2. Activation through a local issue or a local party event; 3. Activation through global issues; 4. Activation through chance. These patterns appear irrespective of party or gender of the interviewee. Although the sample group is far to small to allow generalizations, the result of this study clearly shows that there are regularities in the recollections of political leaders to their beginnings in politics. These regularities are, as of yet, not yet covered by the literature on party membership or political leadership. The results of this study may serve as conjectures for further research in this area which in turn might provide a more robust basis for generalizations.

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