Family matters? Degrees of family politicization in political recruitment and career start of mayors in Belgium

Abstract

In this paper we argue that the meaning of family politicization for recruitment in contemporary democratic politics has changed, and can now be reinterpreted in a modern and postmodern way. Starting from Norris’ recruitment model, we scrutinize potential supply (learning and calculation) and demand (screening and selection) side factors that may contribute to an explanation of the permanent disproportional representation of political family members in current politics, witnessing important electoral (volatility, personalization and mediatization) and partisan (cadre parties) shifts. With recruitment data from a survey among Belgian mayors we construct a ‘Political Family Index’ containing a number of variables assessing potential attitudes (interest, preference) and political behaviour (party membership, holding political office) of father and/or mother of those mayors. We found that mayors coming from highly politicized families start their political career at a younger age and are successful earlier. They do not, however, follow an entirely different route to power.