The office of Politician. Alcántara, M. (2012)

Abstract

What characteristics or qualities must a person have to be considered a politician? Is everyone who engages in politics prepared to play a role within the political environment? Most likely these questions came to the mind of Dr. Manuel Alcántara Sáez, and motivated him to write the book: The politician's job. In said volume, Dr. Alcántara offers us a comprehensive analysis of politics and the professionalization of those who are actively participating in it, all those who perform an activity for the service of society from the government. This analysis consists of five chapters, all of them related to each other and that allow a continuous reading of the text, however, in the same way it lends itself to the study of each one alternately. It begins with a preface, where it refers to each of its chapters with a short introduction to each one of them, this produces interest in the reader for reading it. After that, he continues with the first chapter in which he analyzes the different conceptions of what a politician is, from ancient Greece to modern times; it goes through the definition of the political career and how it is applied; continues with the observations of the professionalization of politicians; in chapter four he talks about the accountability of politicians; and ends with a chapter that focuses on Latin American cases, making an analysis of the trajectories of some influential political actors in this region.