From Profession to Parliament: The Impact of Career Backgrounds on Parliamentary Activity among German Legislators

Abstract

This thesis explores the impact of career backgrounds on the parliamentary activity of German Members of Parliament (MPs). Recognising a gap in the existing research, this study aims to determine how distinct professional experiences – public, political, and market domains – influence MPs' engagement in legislative activities. We adopt a quantitative analysis, utilising Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression models, to measure the impact of professional experience on attendance records at roll-call votes of German MPs from 2013 to 2021. Building on research on Public Service Motivation (PSM), career politicians and work motivation, we formulate several hypotheses to explore the attendance behaviour based on MPs' career backgrounds. Specifically, we hypothesise that MPs with public service backgrounds (public-fit) demonstrate high attendance rates, influenced by a strong intrinsic motivation for public service. Also, we expect MPs with political backgrounds (political-fit) to show the highest attendance, and those from the private sector (market-fit) to have the lowest attendance rates due to less intrinsic motivation. Our findings partially support these hypotheses. The data reveal that public-fit politicians attend parliamentary sessions more frequently than their colleagues from other backgrounds. However, the attendance rates of political-fit MPs, while higher than those of market-fit MPs, do not surpass those of public-fit MPs as anticipated. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that the influence of government party affiliation moderates attendance behaviours across all career backgrounds, suggesting that party alignment plays a more important role than professional background. Our study broadens both theoretical and practical understandings, enhancing the PSM framework by showing how MPs' career backgrounds shape parliamentary engagement and indicate an important role of intrinsic motivation in legislative behaviour. These insights could guide political parties and legislators to tailor their policymaking and human resources strategies more effectively by considering the underlying motivations of MPs from different career backgrounds.