I broadly agree with this and am often pleased to see people go into party politics, government bureaucracies or advocacy on particular policy areas. The skills and connections they gain will hopefully be useful in the long term.
The interesting questions remaining to me here are: i) how much leverage do you get through political engagement vs direct work, aiming to include in your sample people who try and fail; ii) how worrying is it to find yourself working on a controversial issue, both because you’ll have to fight against opponents and because you might be on the wrong side. Tough questions to answer!
I broadly agree with this and am often pleased to see people go into party politics, government bureaucracies or advocacy on particular policy areas. The skills and connections they gain will hopefully be useful in the long term.
The interesting questions remaining to me here are: i) how much leverage do you get through political engagement vs direct work, aiming to include in your sample people who try and fail; ii) how worrying is it to find yourself working on a controversial issue, both because you’ll have to fight against opponents and because you might be on the wrong side. Tough questions to answer!