Public and private interest politics

Abstract

This paper analyses the factors that influence politicians to enter politics. The objective of the project is to examine if the main motivation of politicians to enter politics is public interest or private interest. In order to do, we use data from the Spanish Congress of Deputies that includes personal and professional information about members of Congress of three different legislatures. We construct a multinomial logistic model so as to check the interest to enter politics by education and we find some evidence that lawyers enter politics because of private interest and the motivation of the rest of members with studies different from law, is public interest.