The Socio-Political Profile of Parliamentary Representatives in Greece, Italy and Spain before and after the ‘Eurocrisis': A Comparative Empirical Assessment

In this chapter, we assess the impact of candidate selection mechanisms on the sociopolitical profile of MPs from four key political actors (Five Star Movement, SYRIZA, Ciudadanos and Podemos) elected after the latest general elections in Italy (2013), Greece (September 2015) and Spain (2016). In particular, we want to see how candidate selection affects the descriptive representation of new parties, and whether MPs from SYRIZA, Podemos, Ciudadanos and M5S are any different in their socio-demographic profile from MPs coming from more established parties. Our main hypothesis is that, since new political parties follow different political trajectories and alternative channels of political socialization from the mainstream actors, this will be reflected in their socio-demographic composition. Our data mostly verify our hypothesis that new actors, through the use of bottom-up candidate selection methods, have a more socially diverse profile. This is most evident in Italy and Spain, where such methods were largely adopted; their new actors are characterized by the decreasing role of the dependence of the “party in office” vis-à-vis the “party on the ground”. SYRIZA follows a slightly different pattern largely attributed to the fact that this is not a new party per se. All in all, however, all parties introduce more social diversity in parliaments.