Utbildning som krav i riksdagens utskottsarbete - en kvantitativ studie som undersöker grad av expertstyre i riksdagens utskott ; Training as a requirement in parliamentary committee work – a quantitative study looking at the degree of expert governance in the parliamentary committee

The aim of this study is to analyze how relevant education members of the Swedish parliaments have in relation to the committee they are on. We want to investigate the degree to which they are governed by expertise. The Swedish parliament consists of 349 members, but since this study only focuses on the committees, the number reviewed are 254 members. In order to implement this study, we have used a quantitative method. In this method we have done a total survey from secondary data, by mainly obtaining facts from the Swedish parliament's own website in order to find each member's educational backgrounds. The first thing we measured was the level of education that each member of the committees had. In this survey we had two categories, high-school and college education. Thereafter we categorized each member between these two categories. We constructed a coding schedule by pairing education to each committee depending on their area of work and then used a descriptive statistical analysis to analyze our results. In order to make a complex discussion about this phenomenon, we have used Max Weber's theory with relevant concepts like social closure and profession. The Swedish parliament follows a certain idea called social representation. This means that anyone electable can become a member of the parliament no matter their background. This is because the Swedish parliament tries to represent as many groups of the society as it possibly can. This means that academic education is not the only important merit in order to be a member of the parliament. The results of the study show that the level of academic education is quite high, and many members have a degree from the university. Despite this, the results also show that the relevance between education in relation to the committee’s area varies and is not as high as the general academic education.