From local to national platform : a study of political trajectories 1996-2017

Abstract

In Malta, the year 1993, brought to life the idea of having an administrative council elected by the public responsible who would be responsible for the leadership, the administration and the provision of services in a locality. This thesis started off from the idea, which was also suggested by Lopez M. (2013) that, provided with the necessary and the right tools to exercise power anyone but essentially not everyone can eventually become a member of the rulers of society. With the decentralisation presented by the formation of Local Councils, which essentially brought forward the devolution of power from central to local, citizens from all walks of life had ample opportunity to participate in the political process and start off on the new path of becoming one of society’s political elites. The traditional assumption is that an active involvement in local politics, thus participation in Local Councils, is a mere stepping stone towards national office. Indeed, this dissertation attempts an in-depth study of the past and current patterns of career movements between local government and national parliament in Malta, focusing mainly on the period between 1996 and the election of 2017. It ventures on the researcher’s hypotheses that as time goes by; ‘Local Councils are a launching pad to national politics’. Through a mixed methodological approach, where both qualitative and quantitative research methods were used, the researcher collected the necessary data to find out a plausible answer to try and solve the research question. The interviews with a number of elites were used to explore the attitudes of candidates who were previously councillors and then were successfully elected. On the other hand, the quantitative data collected by the researcher was used to analyse the numbers and look at whether or not there was an increase in the phenomenon. This research also helped to provide an extensive data on all those councillors who took a step further and contested one or more of the General Elections which took place from 1996 to 2017, thus providing a collective data on the mentioned councillors. Although it was difficult to come out with scientific conclusions, this thesis is surely a starting point to bridge the existing literature gap on the matter, particularly on the local arena. Thus, by examining the political trajectories of 202 councillors, this research will attempt to determine whether or not, in the case of Malta, Local Councils can be the launching pad towards National Parliament.