The name is absent

42

collection required time and precision, nothing prevented authors like Squire (1988)
from getting the records about what positions have lower-level politicians won in higher
tiers.

However, there is a theoretical question that deserves substantial attention: how
should ambition be measured? It is clear that a politician that won a spot in the Federal
House and previously had a seat in a local council has had progressive ambition. The
question is whether only those who succeeded in a higher office race should be
considered ambitious. In other words, looking just at the winners might create a severe
selection bias; had tire runner up of that race been another councilman, it is doubtful that
she would had been less ambitious than the new U.S. representative.

The other question posed has to do with the stage that should be looked at.
Specifically, is just a contender in the general election ambitious? Would that same
candidate have been less ambitious had he lost the primary? I suggest that explicit
internal competition is a sufficient condition to recognize patterns of ambition in any
politician. The discussion does not exhaust at that stage, anyways. A politician may
really aspire to a particular spot and behave strategically in order to win it. However,
different factors such as incumbency advantage, lack of money or information about
expected poor performance may deter her from running for the position before the
primary. Is that evidence of no ambition, or a realistic calculation about costs and
benefits?

My criterion tries to reconcile precision and feasibility. Thus, I decided to include
in the sample of ambitious politicians all those subjects who ran in an election for an
executive position; also, subject to data availability, I thought considering those
politicians who lost a primary for a mayoral or gubernatorial position as ambitious, too.

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