Career Opportunities: Does Party-Switching Helps to Career Advancement?

The studies investigating party-switching has focused mostly on party switching within one level of politics, typically when and why MPs switch parties. However, in recent literature party switching is understood as a result of progressive ambitions (e.g. Yoshinaka 2016). In this paper, I try to investigate if party switching is used by politicians to progress from a lower level of politics (municipal, regional) to higher levels of politics (regional, national). Using the data on political careers of candidates who run in municipal, regional, and parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic since 2006, I show the influence of party switching on the trajectory of their careers. The preliminary results shows that 11% of switches have led to improvement in positions of switchers. Most of them occurred within the municipal level where former candidates gained a mandate of municipal councillors. However, there are also instances where the switches have led to gaining elected position on the higher level of politics. In contrast, loyalty has brought improvement of position for 8% of candidates. These results suggest that switching may be a viable strategy for career advancement in comparison with the staying loyal to a party.