Who Enters Politics and Why?

Despite the importance of politicians, empirical work rarely examines who decides to enter politics and why. This survey presents conceptual issues in measuring political entry; reviews work on individual, organizational, and institutional determinants of political entry; and summarizes the main findings and puzzles related to the representation competence trade-off in recent microcensus studies on who runs for office. Fruitful directions for future work are highlighted throughout the article.