Intergenerational Transmission of Party Affiliation Within Political Families
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Intergenerational Transmission of Party Affiliation Within Political Families Linuz Aggeborn1 · Pär Nyman2
© The Author(s) 2020
Abstract We investigate the intergenerational transmission of political-party affiliation within families with at least two politicians. We use Swedish registry data that covers all nominated politicians for the years 1982 to 2014, as well as their family ties. First, we demonstrate there is a strong link between individuals and their parents concerning party affiliation. We also find that this intergenerational transmission persists over generations and across siblings. Our second aim is to investigate the mechanisms behind this result, which we do by first discussing two hypotheses: the one concerns a socialization pathway, the other a materialistic one. We then bring these hypotheses to the data, and we find that the socialization pathway matters more for intergenerational transmission. Keywords Intergenerational transmission · Party politics · Sweden · Registry data
Introduction Individuals are affected by the context in which they grow up, where the family is expected to play a central role. A person’s political participation and political engagement are likely to increase if he or she has a parent that has been nominated to political office. The impact is likely to be twofold: an individual whose father Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s1110 9-020-09628-z) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Linuz Aggeborn [email protected] Pär Nyman [email protected] 1
Department of Government at Uppsala University, Uppsala Center for Fiscal Studies (UCFS) and Uppsala Center for Labor Studies (UCLS), Box 514, Gamla Torget 6, 75120 Uppsala, Sweden
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Department of Government at Uppsala University, Box 514, Gamla Torget 6, 75120 Uppsala, Sweden
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Political Behavior
or mother is a politician for a given party is more likely to be politically active in general; in addition, he or she is more likely to sympathize with the specific party in question. The focus of this paper is on families where both parents and children have been politicians. There are numerous examples from many different countries where the children of politicians themselves become politicians later on—often for the same party as their parents. In Sweden, for example, approximately 28% of those who are politicians and born after 1970 have a parent that was also a politician. There are many possible reasons for an intergenerational connection, with the children of politicians being socialized into specific political beliefs, behaviors, and opinions. They may also have similar political demands because they have a similar material standard, or because they possess the political skills and contacts necessary for success in the political arena. The accumulation of power within families can have negative consequences for political equality. From the standpoint of equal opportunity
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