Within this framework the overall patterns emerge as a funnel-like process during which the career tapers off successively. Commissioners develop attitudes and actions to deal with the expectations and with the paradoxes involved. These actions and attitudes evolve through a field-specific career. This dissertation focuses the sociopsychological mechanisms involved in the career. These mechanisms include the way social meaning is externalized, objectified and internalized.
Social meaning guides the actors and their interaction.
Meanings are fundamental to a given social order by forming an essential part of the field-specific attitude embodied by the actor. The adhesive glue of the career consists of social meanings, which form the basis of the sociopsychological profile of the career. The aim of the study is to explain social meanings in career development in the local political field. The social meanings show what guides the handling of paradoxes and the linking of the actor's life and career. The field-specific meanings also reflect the expectation structures that define the career and its phases.