Still Rising: The Career Politician in the British House of Commons, the
Cabinet and the Shadow Cabinet
The Rise of the ‘Career Politician’
The composition of legislatures has been a longstanding focus in political science. After all, a key function of Parliament is to represent the
electorate (Kelso 2009: 222). A contemporary concern for Parliament’s
lack of representativeness has been its significant under-representation
of ethnic minorities and women (Norris and Lovenduski 1995; Childs
2000; Saggar and Geddes 2000; Philips 2012). As such, descriptive representation is argued to be important for representation to be meaningful
(Chaney and Fevre 2002: 909). This line of reasoning posits that the
dem