Political professionalization: social background,careers and pathways

Abstract

Debating definitionsused in case studies focused on the National Congress the objective here is to refineand propose precise definitionsto the concepts of social background, political career and political pathway for future studies in this fruitful segment of Political Science studies. The analyzes of political elites recruitment suffer from the imprecision of these key concepts, treated as synonyms, sometimes used and classifiedaccording to each authorship, given their open criteria. This article presents a demarcation for political careers studies, pathways and socio-occupational position, focusing on the Brazilian case, reviewing a significantand important part of the national and international literature on the subject. Definingthe social background as educational degrees, region of origin and profession prior to a political career; listing the political pathway as passage through posts and positions in associations and non-public-bureaucratic entities; and finallythe political career as the elective and nominative officesoccupied until the election to another political position