Exploring Criteria for Political Professionalization in Sri Lanka

This paper examines the attitudes of selected power groups about exploring the political professionalization criteria in Sri Lanka. Through a thorough examination of issues of political practice, it focuses the possibility to make space to introduce the concept of political professionalization and prerequisite to resolve or minimize those issues. A total of twenty-seven academics, clergy and journalists were participated in three focus group discussion. Thematic analysis method was used to analyze the data. Through this process, it was revealed three main themes: ‘knowledge’, ‘skills’, ‘values’ and recommends policies for political recruitments. The findings suggested that professionalization political practices should be promoted by introducing knowledge, values and skills as criteria for consideration in political recruitments. And also it is suggested that introduction of professional political practice methods is essential to reduce in political practice issues in the current political scenario of Sri Lanka.