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| Ahead of Print | Last Modified: 24 September 2025
The Parapolitical Path to Parliament: Former Political Support Staff as Parliamentary Members
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Abstract: In Western parliamentary democracies, a growing number of MPs have worked as special advisers, political assistants, and parliamentary aides before their election as members of parliament. They have professional political expertise without being elected officials themselves. We call them parapoliticians, akin to paramedics or paralegals. This exploratory article describes this emerging pathway to the Dutch House of Representatives. The article operationalises the concept, provides theoretical and historical context, and offers insights into the prevalence of parapolitical backgrounds among members of the House of Representatives, and examines variations across political parties. In the 2021 House of Representatives, more than a quarter of MPs had previously worked as political support staff, and these MPs have prominent positions in the parliamentary factions.
Keywords: members of parliament; political careers; political capital; parties; political support staff
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Vol 14 (2026): Understanding the Role of Political Staff and Parliamentary Administrations (In Progress)
© Anchrit Wille, Mark Bovens. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction of the work without further permission provided the original author(s) and source are credited.