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Recruitment and Careers of Legislators in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, 1990-2012

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Recruitment and Careers of Legislators in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, 1990-2012 Transformation of Parliamentary Elites: Recruitment and Careers of Legislators in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, 1990-2012 Dissertation zur Erlangung des akademischen Grades doctor philosophiae (Dr. phil.) vorgelegt dem Rat der Fakultät für Sozial- und Verhaltenswissenschaften der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena von M.Phil. Mindaugas Kuklys geboren am 12. Januar 1974 in Kretinga TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction 4 1. Parliamentary recruitment and theory of elites 7 1.1. The recruitment process 7 1.2. Elite circulation as a link between parliamentary recruitment and democratic elitism 11 1.2.1. Heritage of modern Machiavellians 11 1.2.2. Democratic elitism since Max Weber and Joseph Schumpeter 15 1.3. Changes in social and political background of legislators as an indicator of parliamentary elite transformation 18 2. Elite transformation in Eastern Europe after 1989: A literature review 22 2.1. Linking the type of elite, regime and circulation 23 2.2. Professionalisation of parliamentary elites 25 2.3. Different elites for each phase of social and political change 26 2.4. Theory of elite control and the elite network state 27 2.5. Political capitalism, conversion of power and the “grand coalition” 28 2.6. Post-Communist managerialism and the dominance of cultural capital 29 2.7. Other studies 30 2.8. Summary: Issues of elite/class and circulation/reproduction 32 2.9. Literature on the recruitment and transformation of elites in the Baltics 34 3. Comparative method and the longitudinal data on the Baltic parliamentary elites 38 3.1. Data set on the Baltic parliamentary elites and challenges of classification 43 3.2. Structure of the dissertation 45 4. Structure of opportunities for Baltic legislators 46 4.1. Historical background and issue of citizenship 46 4.2. Electoral systems 49 4.3. Political party families in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania 53 4.4. Remuneration and benefits of parliamentary representatives 60 5. Occupational background as a link between society and parliament 63 5.1. Politics and profession 63 5.2. Occupational profile of legislators in Baltic countries 65 5.2.1 Teachers and professors 67 5.2.2 Journalists and writers 69 5.2.3 Political party employees 72 5.2.4 Civil servants 74 5.2.5 Managers and businessmen 77 5.2.6 Lawyers and other liberal profesions 84 5.3. Concluding remarks on occupational background of MPs: Left liberals in Estonia, conservatives in Latvia and socialists/social democrats in Lithuania 86 6. Pre-parliamentary political experience of Baltic legislators 89 6.1. Pre-parliamentary political experience of legislators in Estonia 91 6.1.1. Estonian MPs as local politicians 91 6.1.2. Estonian MPs as political party leaders 93 6.1.3. Estonian MPs as cabinet ministers 96 6.1.4. Estonian MPs as local politicians, political party leaders and cabinet ministers: A comparison 97 6.2. Pre-parliamentary political experience of legislators in Latvia 99 2 6.2.1. Latvian MPs as local politicians 99 6.2.2. Latvian MPs as political party leaders 101 6.2.3. Latvian MPs as cabinet ministers 104 6.2.4. Latvian MPs as local politicians, political party leaders and cabinet ministers: A comparison 106 6.3. Pre-parliamentary political experience of legislators in Lithuania 108 6.3.1. Lithuanian MPs as local politicians 108 6.3.2. Lithuanian MPs as political party leaders 110 6.3.3. Lithuanian MPs as cabinet ministers 111 6.3.4. Lithuanian MPs as local politicians, political party leaders and cabinet ministers: A comparison 113 6.4. A cross-country comparison: Baltic legislators as local politicians, political party leaders and cabinet ministers 114 6.5. Refining analysis on pre-parliamentary political experience 116 7. Other acquired and ascriptive assets for parliamentary recruitment 122 7.1. Level and type of education 122 7.1.1. Estonia 122 7.1.2. Latvia 124 7.1.3. Lithuania 127 7.1.4. A cross-country comparison: Dominance of engineering, not law 128 7.2. Gender 133 7.2.1. Findings from the literature on the parliamentary recruitment of women 134 7.2.2. Hypotheses and analysis of data 137 7.3. Ethnicity 150 7.3.1. Findings from the literature on the parliamentary recruitment of ethnic minorities 150 7.3.2. Hypotheses and analysis of data 152 7.4. Concluding remarks: Ethnic minority female MPs as double minority 164 8. Individual elite circulation and turnover of the Baltic parliamentary representatives 166 8.1. Legislative turnover in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania 168 8.2. Searching for explanations of high legislative turnover 171 8.3. Conclusion 180 9. Careers of long-standing parliamentarians 181 9.1. Applying the ‘law of increasing disproportion’ 182 9.1.1. Estonia 182 9.1.2. Latvia 186 9.1.3. Lithuania 189 9.2. Political party switching as a ‘requirement’ for long-standing legislators 191 9.3. The parliamentary elite: The most experienced legislators or those at the top of institutional hierarchy? 195 Conclusion 198 References 204 List of variables and annex tables 234 Zusammenfassung 285 Ehrenwörtliche Erklärung 288 Lebenslauf 289 3 Introduction “The pathways taken to office by political leaders certainly affect the way in which they will govern.” Prewitt (1970: 22) “In the long run who gets into the legislature, perhaps rising during a twenty- or thirty-year career into the highest offices of state, may have more important repercussions for the future of the country than other electoral choice.” Norris (1997: 3) The processes of transition in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s were about transformation of political elites and re-emergence of freely elected parliaments that have been and remain a cornerstone of representative democracy. Parliamentary representation, in spite of the egalitarian democratic idea behind it, turned out to be the main pathway into the political elite and confirmed the pattern of many established, long lived and stable democracies where recruitment from the parliament remains the most common route to the top. Classical elite theories (Pareto and Mosca) and most recent studies on political elites (Higley and Lengyel 2000; Best and Cotta 2000; Best and Higley 2010) relate the change and stability of a political order to changes in the personnel of the formal institutions of government (circulation of elites). The competitive theory of democracy (Schumpeter 1979; Sartori 1987) sees political elites as a fundamental element of democratic regimes. Pareto and Mosca emphasised the extent of circulation (how much of it matters?), most recently this line is being followed by Best and Cotta (2000). The study by Higley and Lengyel (2000) argues that what matters is not the extent of elite circulation, but its manner (the way elite is changing). The third group would emphasise neither extent nor manner, but frequency of circulation (Matland and Studlar 2004). The literature divides elite circulation into a circulation of individuals and into a circulation of their social/political profiles (Lasswell, Lerner and Rothwell 1952; Keller 1991). Although a circulation of social/political profiles (structural circulation) always involves circulation of individuals (individual circulation), the opposite is not necessarily the case: individual circulation does not necessarily mean a structural 4 circulation. In other words, we may have totally different names (persons) in a parliament, but their social/political profiles would be the same ones as of persons who did not come back to a parliament. The issue of circulation shaped the main discourse in research on the Eastern European elites after 1989. One group of scholars - Hankiss (1990) and Staniszkis (1991) - argued that old (communist) elites continued, the other - Eyal, Szelényi and Townsley (2000) – attempted to prove that a new elite came into power. However, this discussion on the Eastern European elites has been mostly limited to the individual circulation. The issues of structural circulation have been taken into account in the study by Eyal and Townsley (1995) and Best and Edinger (2003), but this is rather an exception of the common stream. The question of circulation, among the questions of elite cohesion, attitudes and behavior, was considered in the most prominent study on the Baltic elites by Steen (1997), but it was rather limited to circulation of individuals. Individual circulation is a main concern of the article on Estonian elites by Steen and Ruus (2002) as well. Differently from them, the structural circulation is being investigated by Klāsons (2003), but it takes into account the 7th Latvian Saeima (from 1998 to 2002) only. Some elements of structural circulation analysis could be found in the article on the Lithuanian parliamentary elite 1990-2000 by Matonytė (2003), but cross-country dimensions are missing. My own dissertation focuses on the recruitment and careers of the Baltic parliamentary representatives and argues that not only individual but also structural circulation takes place among the Baltic parliamentary elites after 1990. It provides evidence that we have not only new elite members but also a transformation of their social and political profiles. The dissertation takes the social background of legislators (variables of occupation, education, gender, ethnicity and age) as an indicator of the structure of social power and views the political background of MPs (their political party family affiliation) as an indicator of political power. At the same time, variables of gender and ethnicity are employed for measurement of democratisation and the mean number of legislative elections and incumbency rates are used for measuring political professionalisation. By doing this, the presented work treats changes in parliamentary representation as a proxy of structural circulation (transformation) of parliamentary elites. 5 The dissertation, as the first comparative longitudinal study on the parliamentary elites from all three Baltic countries, contributes to the research into the Baltic elites by using original longitudinal data1 - it covers the social and political backgrounds of the Baltic parliamentary representatives in the period from 1990 to 2012.
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