Miriam Golden (European University Institute)

“Legislator educational attainments, reelection rates, and level of economic development in democracies around the world”

Abstract: We present newly-collected data on educational attainments of all legislators in national lower houses in 96 democracies around the world. We study whether this measure, which is often believed to proxy legislator quality, is associated with higher reelection rates. Our data show that is not the case and that legislators experience almost identical reelection rates regardless of their level of education. The main determinant of reelection is the level of economic development of the country rather than this measure of individual quality. Our data also show that legislators are consistently highly educated regardless of level of economic development, suggesting they comprise a specific segment of the population.