New Roles for Postwar British Politics: Ideologues, Generalists, Specialists, and the Progress of Professionalization in Parliament

In 1876, Trollope's Mr. Wharton, Tory of the old school, .. abhorred in his heart the class of politicians to whom politics was a profession rather than a creed. Today it is both. But the significance of this fact is not yet fully appreciated. The textbook accounts of the British House of Commons portray it as the principal example of a parliament that debates rather than legislates, as an agreeable club peopled by clever amateurs, as a body of sheep under the spell of party discipline. These images no longer fit the reality.' As a consequence of growth in the size and complexity of British government during the postwar period, the House of Commons has become institutionalized for legislative intervention, dominated by professional politicians and increasingly rebellious and influential. Policy have been in the vanguard of this transformation and have established their approach to the job as the predominant role on Westminster's backbenches. The following article constructs an account of this role and examines its consequences for behavior and its antecedents in career decisions. By applying a motivational approach to role analysis, the investigation first describes the aims and strategies of the principal types of policy advocates -ideologues, generalists, and specialists-and examines what they do in the House of Commons. Next, it explores the role's consequences for behavior: for allocating time among alternative activities, putting down oral and written questions to ministers, and participating in select committees. This analysis rounds out the account and offers a theoretical addendum, since role variables have rarely been linked convincingly with behavior. The article concludes by turning the role measure into a dependent variable in order to examine sources of role choice that arise from constituency characteristics and individual incentives.