All Roads Lead Through Brussels? Career Ambition and the European Parliament

My dissertation presents an institutional theory for career behavior in the European Parliament. By focusing on the careers of members of the European Parliament, the study presents a rigorous analysis of the powerful multinational legislature from within—problematizing the link between institutional change and individual action, as evidenced in the changing career paths taken by MEPs. \ud \ud I address variation in the dependent variable of the dissertation—MEP career behavior—in three different ways: (1) the incidence of MEPs who develop extended careers at the European level, (2) the incidence of MEPs who use their time in the EP in order to promote a broader career path, and (3) the strategies used by MEPs to advance internally within the EP’s unique committee system. \ud \ud The dissertation uses a major new source of quantitative data collected on the personal and professional backgrounds of all MEPs, 1979-2009. It also relies on extensive qualitative data, taken from over fifty interviews with legislators and other elites in Belgium, France, Germany, Luxembourg, and Poland. The dissertation has implications for the nexus of institutional change and the behavior of political elite, broadly, as well as the study of representative democracy in the EU, specifically. It should be seen as an important contribution to the fields of legislative studies, political sociology, and party politics. \u