Political Elites As Educational Elites

Contemporary political elites are educational elites. In most western democracies, almost all incumbents in political office are highly educated. This paper documents to what extent political executives and legislatives in a number of Western European democracies are dominated by university graduates. With the use of primary and secondary data, we identify to what extent educational differences in political elites can be observed across Western European countries. Next, we want to understand why the higher educated are so dominant. We show how the connection between social milieu and the opportunities for a political career has weakened in the 20^th century and how a university education became almost a condition sine qua non for recruitment for political office. Various supply and demand factors in the selection process have led to extraordinary large numbers of highly educated citizens among the political elites.