Biography and political behavior: determinants of parliamentary decision-making in mid-nineteenth century Germany, France and Great Britain

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate how signi ficant social-demographic characteristics are if we want to explain the political behavior and orientations of actors in past societies. We approached this problem on the basis of roll call data and biographical data of the representatives of the Frankfurt National Assembly, the Paris Assembl?e Nationale Constituante 1848/49 and the British House of Commons 1841 1842. For comparative purposes results of related studies about the Mexican National Assembly of 1916 1917 and the German Reichstag of 1893 and 1903 have been used. The main hypothesis was that the social background and the social affiliations of the representatives determined their parliamentary decision making. This assumption has been tested first by a heterogeneous model (basic model) which combines standard attributs of collective-biographical research: age, profession, membership in the nobility, and regional origin. In a second step we split up the basic model in three partial hypotheses, which have been derived from general assumptions concerning the genesis and transmission of political orientations: . an interested oriented approach which interprets political beha vior according to the wish to get actual advantages in the contest for power, wealth and prestige; 2. an approach which emphasizes the effects of socialization and which assumes that political orientations have been acquired during political socialization and selection by institutions which transmit values and by experiences in the political career; 3. a theoretical approach which is focused on geographic repre sentation and which assumes a close connection between parlia mentary decision making and the orientations of the electors. Multiple Classification Analysis was used to test the different models. The research reported in this paper was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. . PRESENTATION OF THE PROBLEM The analysis of the social background of elites has an obvious justification when it concerns the investigation of recruiting processes: social-demogra phic characteristics constitute elements of the opportunity structure which determine the access and the career chances of the aspirants.(i) More pro blematical and controversial is the influence which the social background of the members of the elite has on their political attitudes and behavior.(2) Investigations concerning contemporary elites show that we must be very careful with intuitive suppositions in this area, since the type of influ ence and its extent varies considerably. In various cultural contexts vari ables which supposedly have a large influence were far less significant than expected.(3) On the other hand, in historical investigations an intuitive psychologization of social-demographic variables, i.e. inferences from (+) Address all communications to: Heinrich Best, Universit?t zu K?ln, Institut f?r Angewandte Sozialforschung, Greinstr. 2, 5000 K?ln 41 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.58 on Tue, 11 Oct 2016 04:31:22 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms