Circulation of the Silesian Political Elite - Case Study

Abstract

This paper is aimed to investigate the exchange index of the Silesian political elite in cities with county rights from the 2002 election through five elections until 2018. The author’s deliberations on the political elite exchange are based on the political elite circulation theory presented by Vilfredo Pareto. The key research question to be answered in this paper is: What is the exchange index of the local political elite’s representatives in cities with county rights in the Silesian province (PL “województwo” [voivodeship] – a local government administration unit in Poland). A regression analysis was carried out to test the influence of the year of the term of office and city on the political elite’s exchange level. The list of councillors was transformed into a database using a Python algorithm. Further data operations (diagram plotting, model calculation) were performed in the R 4.0.5 statistical environment (R Core Team, 2020). The analyses proved that the observed values of the political elite exchange index were close to the mean or distributed homogenously around it. Chorzów was the only exception for which the political elite exchange index was significantly lower than the mean for each year. The mean index of “political elite exchange” was higher in 2002 than in other years, while the expected means of 2006, 2010, and 2014 differ insignificantly. The analyses revealed a relatively stable composition of the elites. The summary contains conclusions and recommendations.