All data refer to Greece. I have omitted the period leading up to the first elections after the restoration of democracy, as well as the economic crisis and its aftermath. I've also omitted the first (failed) hung parliament of 1989.
If you think lawyers cause growing debt, here is your graph. Here the Y axis refers to the change in debt in the term of the current parliament. It suggest that once more than 35% of parliament are lawyers debt tends to rise substantially:
If you think lawyers are voted in after public sector waste sets in, here's your graph. Here the Y axis refers to the change in debt in the term of the previous parliament. It would suggests that once debt to GDP has grown by more than 20% or more in one term, the likelihood of a lawyer becoming an MP rises dramatically.
I think this round goes to the people who think lawyers are the result of fiscal irresponsibility. Thoughts on a postcard as to the mechanism of this.
But more importantly, I intend to use this in future elections as a means of approximating Greek debt/GDP. Sure, it's a little excel regression I knocked together based on a small number of datapoints but I suspect that's still more rigorous than the actual statistics.
