RECRUITMENT INTO THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT OF ROMANIAN CANDIDATES - ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL PROFILES

Abstract

This study attempts to analyse a complex data set (which includes age, sex, educational and professional background, public experience, party career, wealth) regarding all 215 candidates proposed by the five Romanian parties winning seats in the 2009 EP elections. There are empahasized the differences between the successful and the unsuccessful candidates. The mechanics behind this simple fact has provoked important scholarly curiosity, transforming the patterns, the outputs and the effects of recruitment into some of the most researched topics in the contemporary goal of political elites' studies. Recruitment pools vary from country to country but, in most cases, parties are the main source of candidates. From this point of view, the paper analyses the perspective of electorates and selectorates. Also, one can remark that the voters considered the solutions of the right for the problems generated by the economic crisis as being more credible and more efficient than the ones provided by the left. The euro-elections campaign was a good opportunity for the campaign staffs to test their potential, months before the big run for the presidential elections. The confiscation of the electoral agenda for the European elections and the primacy of local or national issues are also traditional in the Western Europe, as they are in Estern and Central Europe.