The Initial Run for Office:Decision Dynamics of Entering Electoral Politics.

A critical component involved in evaluating the health of a democracy is the degree to which well positioned, politically astute citizens are willing to engage the political system and run for public office. The extant research pertaining to the candidate emergence process, however, virtually ignores citizens’ initial decisions to run for office. Instead, political scientists tend to focus on candidates and office holders – all of whom have already decided to run – and explore, retrospectively, the strategic nature of their political ambition. Although these studies shed light on the cost / benefit analyses candidates and office holders employ when deciding whether to enter specific races, seek higher office, or retire from politics altogether, they do not aid in our understanding of why certain people pursue elective positions in the first place. Based on the results from our Citizen Political Ambition Study – a national survey of nearly 3700 men and women in the four professions that most frequently precede a career in politics – this article provides the first empirical assessment of potential candidates’ attitudes about seeking any local, state, or federal level political office. We employ literature on political participation and candidate emergence to develop and test several hypotheses concerning the factors that spur potential candidates to consider a candidacy. The results of this first systematic analysis of the initial decision to run for office indicate that race, gender, political socialization, and perceptions of the electoral environment serve as key predictors of who considers entering the electoral arena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]