The Endurance of Politicians’ Values Over Four Decades: A Panel Study

Abstract

How much do the political values of politicians endure throughout their careers? And how might the endurance be explained? This paper uses a unique longitudinal data set to examine the persistence of political values among national politicians: members of the British House of Commons, who completed Rokeach-type value ranking instruments during 1971–73 and again 40 years later in 2012–16. The findings show remarkable stability and provide strong support for the persistence hypothesis which predicts that politicians develop crystallized value systems by their early thirties and largely maintain those values into retirement. This is consistent with the view that rapid changes in aggregate party ideologies have more to do with new views among new waves of recruits than with conversions among old members.