In this series of blogs on nominations of outsiders to the Legislative Council I focussed, respectively, on profession, public service, Manxness and regionality and personality traits.  In this final blog I will seek to bring these threads together.

The paradigm nominee.

Firstly, what is the paradigm nominee? It should be stressed that the survey has considered all non-MHKs/sitting MLCs nominated for the Legislative Council since 1962. Combining these nominees gives us a decent amount of data to look at, but inevitably will be focussed on the long term picture, rather than current trends.

That reservation made, the paradigm nominee for Legislative Council would be:

• A man, although this is much less paradigmatic as we get nearer to the present. Over the entire period, only 18 of the 63 nominees, or a little under 30%, have been women.
• A professional, or retired professional, working in “Business, Media, and Public Service”.
• A person with a record of public service, typically including a career in the public sector, service in local government, or work for a charity.
• A long term resident of the Isle of Man, ideally having been raised on the Isle of Man, or raising their own children on the Island.
• An extrovert engaged with the external world, with a breadth of interests, high group visibility, and enthusiasm; ideally combined with a passion for the proposed role, or work that they could do in the role.
• A conscientious and honest person of integrity.
• A team player able to challenge members of the team.
• An intelligent person with the ability to carry out critical analysis.

Focussing on successful nominees.

Would this paradigm change if we focussed on successful nominees? This is a much smaller group – 13 have been appointed to the Legislative Council from outside Tynwald, so a little over 20% of all such candidates who have been nominated. Care needs to be taken in giving too much weight to what appear to be differences between two small groups.

The paradigm above is largely a good description of successful nominees too. Successful nominees are similarly described as from a professional career background, similarly extroverts with passion, similarly conscientious and honest, similarly team players able to challenge the team, and similarly intelligent and critical.

While successful nominees remained mainly men, the gap between men and women is much smaller when we focus on successful nominees. At 5 of the 13 (or a little under 40%), this gap is half the size of that for nominees; and, as with the nominees, has seen significant improvement over time. So, given the changes I have already identified over time in the nomination pool, if we look at successful nomination to refine the paradigm, I think it would be fair to replace “A man” with “A person”.

Turning to public service, the paradigm successful nominee looks a little different from the nominee pool more broadly, more like a person with a record of public service, typically involving work with or for a charity or other civil society organisation, or work with a government agency. 12 of the 13 successful nominations included reference to public service, a theme which we have already seen as very common in nominations generally.  The basis for a public service claim was very varied, but the most common claims were around involvement with governmental agencies including tribunals (5), charities (4), sports or hobby clubs (3), and Manx cultural associations (3).  In contrast with nominations as a whole, reference to careers in the public sector were comparatively less common than in nominations generally – 2 of the 13, so 15%, as opposed to 33% of the nominations generally. Also much less well represented in successful nominations was involvement in local government – 1 of the 13, so 8%, as opposed to 28% of the nominations generally.

Finally, turning to Manxness, I suggested that nominations seemed to emphasise a civic nationalism view of Manxness, with long-term residence being key. For successful nominees, long term residence remained a common marker, but descriptions as of Manx ancestry or Manx birth were substantially more common in successful nominees (7 of 13, or 54%) than nominees generally (14 of 63, or 22%).

Causes for concern?

It is easy to see why most of the elements of this paradigm are in play, but it does raise three possible areas of concern.

Firstly, I flagged earlier the mismatch between the proportion of the Manx workforce working as professionals in Business, Media and Public Service, and their representation in nominations to the Legislative Council. If we were to ignore the professional part of the paradigm, and focus on the other elements, would much be lost? In other words, is the nomination pool making enough use of people who otherwise fit the paradigm but are from other work backgrounds?  Sustained experience, and leadership of, civil society organisations such as charities, pressure groups, and trade unions might provide strong evidence of other aspects of the paradigm.

Secondly, the dual deployment of a career in the public sector as both professional background and public service could be seen as privileging those with public sector careers over those with private sector careers. Looking at the admittedly small number of successful nominees, however, it seems that MHKs are less accepting of the link between public sector careers and public service when voting than when making nominations.

Finally, there does seem to be a difference between the paradigm nominee’s Manxness (which is mainly based on long-term residence), and the successful nominee’s Manxness (which although substantially based on long-term residence, has a larger element of ancestry or birth). Generally, an emphasis on ancestry or place of birth is seen as problematic – for instance race, which includes ethnic or national origins, is a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2017 (see Equality Act 2017 s.10). It should be reiterated, however, that the pool of successful nominees is so small, and the importance of individual personality and characteristics so obvious, that any difference in ideas of Manxness between nomination and vote may well be illusory.

The next round of MLC elections.

Looking forward, what sort of people might we expect to see being put forward for the Legislative Council? I would anticipate seeing substantial number of women and men described in their nominations as:

• People with a record of public service, typically including a career in the public sector, service in local government, or work for a charity or community group; perhaps with an increased emphasis on the latter.
• Long term residents of the Isle of Man.
• Passionate extroverts.
• Conscientious and honest people.
• Team players able to challenge members of the team.
• Intelligent persons with the ability to carry out critical analysis.

I also anticipate significant numbers of professionals, or retired professionals, especially those working in “Business, Media and Public Service”. It would be good to see them joined in the process by those from other work backgrounds.

In my earlier blogs on nominations of outsider to the Legislative Council I focussed, respectively, on profession, public service, and Manxness and regionality. A fair criticism is that these categories are only indicators that the nominee possesses traits which make them suitable to be an MLC – that is, that their personality and experience shows they are the right person for the job.

Experience is, I think, entirely subsumed in the earlier discussions – a nominee whose profession is referred to is not being nominated because they are an advocate, for instance, but because of the experience that has given them, and the skills they have developed. Personality, however, is more complex.

Personality is an area of increasing academic study, and within that a thriving subfield is the personality (and perceived personality) of politicians. Scholars have argued that personality – as opposed to ideology – is becoming more important even countries with an entrenched system of party politics. Aicholzer and Willman, for instance, suggest in their open access journal article that:

“Just as ideology represents the long-term and stable underpinnings of parties, personality traits are long-term and stable psychological characteristics that govern individuals’ and politicians’ consistent patterns of values, attitudes, and ultimately behavior (Caprara & Vecchione, 2017). A candidate’s personality traits can therefore be used as a short-cut by voters to assess what candidates are going to do during their term in office (i.e., ideological leanings) and how they are going to do it (i.e., conduct in office)”

If personality, or rather voters’ perception of personality, is becoming more important in large democracies, it has always been central to small democracies such as the Isle of Man. In a very useful comparative study of four such democracies, Veenendaal, again in an open journal access article, concludes that even in the three case-study countries which have an established party system, they “appear[ed] to exist as vehicles in support of individual politicians”. He argues that “the existence of parties conceals and misrepresents the genuine nature of political contestation in microstates, which is essentially based on personal instead of ideological premises”. So, personality is well worth looking at.

Aicholzer and Willman use six categories of personality traits in their analysis – what are commonly referred to as the Big Five (openness to experience, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism), supplemented by a trait from an alternative taxonomy, that of “honesty-humility”. They find that, at least in the groups they studied, voters preferred candidates with high levels of openness, conscientiousness, extraversion and honesty, but low levels of agreeableness and neuroticism.

We can take these six traits as categories for nominations to the Legislative Council, and map onto them every explicit reference to a personality trait (as opposing to subtler messages about personality traits that a nominator may be putting forward by referring to say a career in the police). Not every nomination makes reference to such a trait, but the majority do (only 8 not referring to a personality trait of some kind).

The most common traits identified fell within “extraversion”, which we can very roughly describe as pronounced engagement with the external world, which can involve enjoying interacting with people, having a breadth of interests, high group visibility, and enthusiasm. 26 nominations referred to this in one way or another.

The next most common traits identified fell within conscientiousness, with exactly that word frequently being adopted. 23 nominations referred to this.

The next most common traits identified fell within honesty-humility, frequently being described as integrity. 22 nominations referred to this.

The last category I want to talk about using Aicholzer and Willman’s six traits is agreeableness. Broadly speaking, agreeable individuals value getting along with others, while low agreeableness individuals are often competitive or challenging people. 26 nominations described the nominee in ways consistent with high agreeableness, while 11 described the nominee in ways consistent with low agreeableness. At times the nominating MHK described the same nominee in both ways – for instance the nomination of Paul Beckett. What is going on?

I think the best explanation is that nominations reflect the complexity of the role of MLC. If I may steal a phrase, being part of “Team Tynwald” requires an ability to work constructively as part of a team for common goals; and being a member of the national legislature requires an ability to recognise the importance of the nation, and of society. At the same time, being an MLC – particular when the emphasis is on the Legislative Council as a scrutiny body at times challenging an established point of view – requires scepticism, a willingness to challenge, and at times a willingness to challenge without substantial support from others. Nominations seek to portray the candidate as agreeable, but not too agreeable; as disagreeable, but not too disagreeable. If agreeableness is rated more highly by MHKs than by the voters in elections studied by Aicholzer and Willman, this could be seen as a pragmatic response to members of “Team Tynwald” appointing new members to their team; members with whom they will have to work.

Using this established set of traits is interesting. I was a little surprised to find honesty-humility was not even more broadly deployed in nominations.  Perhaps, like lack of neuroticism (no mentions), it was something that was often taken as read. We should, however, recognise that any attempt to map the range of human personality traits onto a small number of discrete categories is going to lose something – perhaps much – in translation. Gorbaniuk and his colleagues question the value of the Big Five, and instead argue that “research on the structure of politicians’ perceived personality traits should be conducted for each country separately. The specificity of a particular country, its culture, and its political scence may plan an important role in this respect”. The psycholexical method they use for their study of the Ukraine is extremely impressive, and could work well in the unique context of the Manx MLC process, but is not something for a lone scholar to attempt. Nonetheless, their scepticism about their general, and their interest in the particular, led me to keep an eye open for traits which were commonly mentioned, but which did not necessarily fit easily or transparently into a six trait model. Two additional traits are worth mentioning.

Firstly, intelligence (24) and the ability to be critical (19) were frequently mentioned by nominators. Given the emphasis on the Legislative Council as a scrutiny chamber preceded the move towards appointing outsiders as MLCs, this is unsurprising.

Secondly, and something more of a surprise, passion was a recurring theme in a minority of nominations, appearing 18 times. Sometimes this was in the abstract, at other times it was associated with passion for the role, or as passion for a particular agenda (for instance preservation of the Manx environment, or equality, or human rights).

In the next blog, I will bring the different threads in these blogs together to identify the paradigm nominee for the Legislative Council and – more of a reach – the paradigm successful nominee.

Together with Teale Phelps Bondaroff, I wrote a long blog post on the changes to prayers in the House of Keys. Available on the excellent Law & Religion UK blog here .