notes.husk.org. scribblings by Paul Mison.

On politics and professions

There was a lawyer, an engineer and a politician… at The Economist is well worth a read. Some quotes:

Mr Obama’s inner circle is sprinkled with classmates from Harvard Law: the dean of that school, Elena Kagan, is solicitor-general; Cass Sunstein, a professor there, is also in the administration.
President Hu, in contrast, is a hydraulic engineer (he worked for a state hydropower company). His predecessor, Jiang Zemin, was an electrical engineer, who trained in Moscow at the Stalin Automobile Works. The prime minister, Wen Jiabao, specialised in geological engineering.

Africa is full of presidents who won power as leaders of military coups. Many countries, including America, have political dynasties; in Britain, networks are formed at Oxford and Cambridge universities. Countries often have marked peculiarities. Egypt likes academics; South Korea, civil servants; Brazil, doctors.

The presence of so many engineer-politicians in China goes hand in hand with a certain way of thinking. An engineer’s job, at least in theory, is to ensure things work, that the bridge stays up or the dam holds. The process by which projects get built is usually secondary. That also seems true of Chinese politics, in which government often rides roughshod over critics.

Scott Gehlbach and Konstantin Sonin [argue] that three factors have influenced businessmen to go into politics in post-Soviet countries. Politics helps them harm competitors; in new democracies, robber barons are often the only ones rich enough to finance election campaigns; and business people do not trust politicians to keep campaign promises because there is no real party discipline, so they go into politics themselves.

The intrusive demands upon aspiring members of any American administration make it harder for outsiders to enter politics. (The Obama team asked applicants, “If you have ever sent an…e-mail, text message or instant message that could…be a possible source of embarrassment to you, your family or the President-Elect if it were made public, please describe.”) For good or ill, politics is becoming its own profession.

The article is only really let down by its fairly scrappy second chart (included above), but still, it’s a useful piece.