Vem vill ha ”superpolitiker”?
En studie om sambandet mellan tilltro till det politiska systemet, politisk sofistikation och synen på mandatackumulering bland politiker
Keywords:
mandatackumulering, kritiska medborgare, kognitiv mobilisering, politiskt förtroende, politisk sofistikationAbstract
Previous research has shown that citizens in general tends to express a negative disposition towards the phenomenon of multiple-mandate holding, i.e., a process where politicians collect overlapping political mandates on more than one institutional level. This phenomenon has in Finland also contributed to a public debate, as the extent of multiple-mandate holding in Finland stands out in a comparative European perspective. The potential costs and benefits from a political system perspective have been extensively discussed by previous research, although the literature is still missing more explanatory studies from a citizen perspective focusing on explaining individual-level variation in attitudes towards multiple-mandate holding. This especially within a national context characterized by extensive multiple-mandate holding among politicians. The purpose of this study is therefore to make an empirical contribution to fill that lacuna. In order to explore this phenomenon, we use survey data collected from a Finnish citizen panel during 2022–2023 which is analysed using suitable statistical analyses. The results show that there is a clear association between how citizens relate to the workings of the political system, and attitudes towards multiple-mandate holding, while we were unable to confirm an expected association between individual-level political sophistication and attitudes towards multiple-mandate holding.
