Political Recruitment to the Ontario Legislative Assembly: A Research Schema

Abstract

Political recruitment is a process by which individuals with certain expectations and occupying certain specified social positions ln their community are screened by representatives of political institutions for elective office. In this inquiry, three pairs of variables corresponding to the three elements of the process -- resources, opportunities, and motivation (interpreted as expectations )-- are structured into a research schema. This schema is applied to the Members of the Ontario Legislative Assembly with the objective of identifying recurring uniformities of activity among the recruitment experiences of those political actors.