Johanna Rickne: The Class Ceiling in Politics

Research seminar with Johanna Rickne, professor of Economics at SOFI, Stockholm University Abstract: Prior studies have documented that working-class individuals rarely become parliamentarians. We kno

Venue: Institutet för framtidsstudier, Holländargatan 13, 4th floor, Stockholm, or online.Research seminar with Johanna Rickne, professor of Economics at SOFI, Stockholm University.Register hereAbstracPrior studies have documented that working-class individuals rarely become parliamentarians. We know less about when in the career pipeline to parliament workers disappear, and why. We study these questions using detailed data on the universe of Swedish politicians’ careers over a 50-year period. We find roughly equal-sized declines in the proportion of workers on various rungs of the political career ladder ranging from local to national office. We reject the potential explanations that workers lack political ambition, public service motivation, honesty, or voter support. And while workers’ average high school grades and cognitive test scores are lower, this cannot explain their large promotion disadvantage, a situation that we label a class ceiling. Organizational ties to blue-collar unions help workers advance, but only to lower-level positions in left-leaning parties. We conclude that efforts to improve workers’ numerical representation should apply throughout the career ladder and focus on intra-party processes.

Niels Selling

I am a researcher at the Institute for Futures Studies, an adjunct associate professor at Linköping University, and an adjunct professor at IESEG School of Management. I am a mixed-methods researcher w

Selling pictures. Pictorial Economy and Commoditization 1820–2020

This project will place the current discussions concerning AI-generated images in a historical context, comparing it to two previous technological breakthroughs that have affected the use of pictures for commercial purposes. 

Research seminar with Gert Helgesson, Professor, Stockholm Centre for Healthcare EthicsTitle: Dealing with a university’s historical heritage: ethical quandaries. RegisterAbstractIn the fall of 2020 a wo

Gert Helgesson: Dealing with a university’s historical heritage: ethical quandaries

Research seminar with Gert Helgesson, Professor, Stockholm Centre for Healthcare Ethics Abstract In the fall of 2020 a working group was appointed to deal with the historical heritage of Karolinska In

Business and Politics Abstract What determines whether or not firms lobby on the same policy issues? Scholars offer two broad answers to this question. Firms that are (1) similar or (2) connected throug

Interest Groups & Advocacy volume 10, pp.47–67 AbstractThe weak correlation between lobbying and policy outcomes is puzzling. The main argument developed here is that the puzzle is partly caused by

Working paper 2019 nr 12. This paper analyses career paths and career considerations among policy professionals in Sweden. It builds on a longitudinal data set in which the professionals’ careers are m

The present study explores data on transfers of gifts/economic support to relatives, and analyses these in relation to different kinds of income, education, age, time since migration, acquisition of c