Dismantling the Dictatorship of the Highly Educated
Five of these seven Harvard students will eventually join Congress.
Photographer: Victor J. Blue/Getty ImagesIn the affluent nations of northwestern Europe, people with university educations have taken over politics. Cabinet ministers with fancy degrees are nothing new, but more and more parliamentary seats have been going to college graduates. In some countries, the highly educated's share of seats is completely unprecedented. In others, it hasn't been this high since the 1800s, when politics was still an explicitly elite activity.
This data is from an important and surprisingly engaging new book, "Diploma Democracy: The Rise of Political Meritocracy," by Dutch political scientists Mark Bovens of the University of Utrecht and Anchrit Wille of the University of Leiden.1503677893306 Their focus is on a few countries in Europe, but similar trends are of course apparent in the U.S. as well.