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Article Excerpt
In the words of Abraham Lincoln, democracy is government of the people, by the people, for the people. As such the notion that politicians can somehow be 'selected' rather than 'elected' appears to run contrary to the idea of democracy itself. Yet, ironically, selection lies at the heart of many election processes. In the UK and most other European countries, individuals who wish to represent a political party in government first need to be approved by that party and adopted by a constituency as a political candidate. Consequently, individuals must be selected before they can fight an election. (1) To date, however, little if any consideration has been given to how political selection compares with processes used by organizations to recruit employees. This is surprising for two reasons. First, despite a wealth of evidence that individual differences predict selection success and job performance (e.g. Barrick & Mount, 1991; Salgado, Anderson, Moscoso, Bertua, de Fruyt, & Rolland, 2003; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998) little attention has been paid to whether political selection systems identify individuals who are more successful in political roles. Second, although political selection has been criticized as 'exclusive' in restricting access to political roles for groups such as women and Black and minority ethnic people (Elgood, Vinter, & Williams, 2002; Norris & Lovenduski, 1995; Riddell, 2003; Saggar, 2001), few attempts have been made to apply what is known about diversity and employee selection to political selection. Consequently, there is little systematic evidence that political selection systems are fair or that they demonstrate good criterion-related validity.
The research described here resulted from an opportunity to redesign the process used by a major UK political party to approve prospective Parliamentary candidates. The primary aim of this was to make candidate selection more objective, rigorous and fair by following guidelines from personnel selection research. A detailed analysis of the Member of Parliament (MP) role was undertaken followed by the development and validation of what we believe to be the first assessment centre (AC) for political selection. This process, together with a longitudinal follow-up of candidates selected to fight seats in the 2005 UK General Election, provided an opportunity to address two research questions: (a) to what extent are individual differences in assessment centre scores associated with electoral performance and (b) is the performance of men and women comparable when assessed for political roles using a standardized selection process?
Predicting political success
Industrial/Organizational [I/O] psychologists have paid remarkably little attention to political selection, despite clear parallels with employee selection. Possible reasons for this include a historical tendency for theorists to consider political roles as very different from occupational roles (e.g. Phillips, 1998), and the fact that research access to political parties, especially their selection processes, has been difficult to obtain. For their part, I/O psychologists have also tended to treat political behaviour as being detrimental to effective organizational functioning (Hochwarter, Kacmar, Perrewe, & Johnson, 2003; Randall, Cropanzano, Bormann, & Birjulin, 1999); although politicking (mobilizing support for personal rather than organizational gains) is often confused with political skill (the ability to work effectively in a complex environment of stakeholders with conflicting aims, through persuasion, negotiation and influence). Whilst this confusion may explain the dearth of research concerned with political skill in the workplace, there is evidence that interest is growing in its positive contribution to areas of work performance such as leadership (see Ammeter, Douglas, Gardner, Hochwarter, & Ferris, 2002). The failure to draw parallels between political and employee selection is therefore surprising and unfortunate for two reasons. First, findings from personnel selection research may be used to develop more effective systems for identifying individuals capable of political roles. Second, an understanding of political skill in politicians could help to inform how political skill is developed and utilized in the workplace.
In order to design any selection process, the first step is to undertake a job analysis to identify the knowledge, skills, abilities and other attributes [KSAOs] that are required to perform the role effectively. Whilst much has been speculated about the KSAOs required by politicians, there have been few systematic attempts to gather empirical evidence to support these relationships (Deluga, 1998; Lyons, 1997). In comparison, there is extensive evidence that individual differences in KSAOs predict effectiveness in occupational roles. For example, general mental ability [GMA] has been identified as the single most important predictor of job performance across different work domains (Salgado et al., 2003; Schmidt & Hunter, 1998). Personality constructs such as conscientiousness and openness have also been associated with improved work performance (Barrick & Mount, 1991), as have other individual attributes such as communication skills and motivation (Silvester, Patterson, Koczwara, & Ferguson, in press).
It is therefore possible to build on findings from studies of occupational roles to postulate which psychological attributes are likely to be associated with performance in political roles. For example, politicians (and aspiring politicians) must be able to deal effectively with conflict and rejection, they must be able to tolerate a 24/7 life-style where they can be contacted at any time of the night or day, and they must also be able to cope with intrusion into their personal lives. Personality characteristics such as motivation, resilience and self-confidence are, therefore, likely to be important (Valenty & Feldman, 2002; Winter, 2002). In one of the few empirical investigations in this area Rubenzer, Faschingbauer, and Ones (2000, 2002) looked at politicians' personality as rated by observers. They found that US presidents tended to be perceived as more extroverted, less open to experience and less agreeable than typical Americans. They also found that observers rated presidents as having greater achievement striving, assertiveness and openness to feelings, but rated them lower on straightforwardness, modesty and openness to values. We do not know, however, whether these qualities were important determinants of success in these political roles. Researchers exploring employees' willingness to engage in political behaviour at work have found an association with self-esteem, Machiavellianism, Need for Power, and Locus of Control (Biberman, 1985; Ferris, Russ, & Fandt, 1989), but again, there have been few longitudinal investigations of causal relationships.
In this study, we identified two characteristics likely to be important for effectiveness as a politician. First, politicians must be able to communicate effectively with members of the public; they must listen to the needs of their constituents, communicate these in government, and persuade potential voters of their intentions, competence and commitment. Politicians must therefore communicate effectively and persuasively across different audiences and communication media. We predicted that individuals who demonstrate higher levels of communication skill during a political selection process would perform better in a general election (hypothesis la). Secondly, we identified critical thinking skills as an individual characteristic likely to be important in determining political success, because politicians (and aspiring politicians) must be able to sift through large amounts of information quickly, identify key arguments, balance...
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