Parliamentary Institutions: Members, Parties and Legislative Production

Cotta and Verzichelli provide a rich study on the changing nature of representation in Europe and analyze how the character of legislative elites and the process of legislative recruitment developed in Western Europe over the past 150 years. They focus on changes in recruitment related to the extension of suffrage, the role of parties and legislative professionalization, arguing that „the process of institutional democratization will promote a democratization of the representatives but also their professionalization and partisation”. While analyzing empirical data authors have proved that a significant relationship exists between institutional and political change on one side and transformation of patterns of recruitment and career of parliamentary elites on the other; the extension of suffrage has deep changes in features of political elites and democratic continuity/discontinuity matters.…