As many incumbents in Malta are re-elected (see details elsewhere ) there will be a corresponding impact on the composition of the various legislatures. Two aspects will noted here: First, the number of returning members in each legislature and, second, the cumulative effect when members are repeatedly re-elected.
The first Figure below shows the share of seats which re-elected members occupied in each legislature since 1924. (There is a separate numerical tabulation as well).
Those with prior legislative experience have made up, on average, about three quarters the legislative memberships since 1966. After the most recent elections, veteran legislators have occupied some eighty percent of the seats.
The returning members' share of legislative seats fluctuates somewhat with both the length of time between elections and the changing size of the legislature. Thus, the seven-year interval between the 1955 and 1962 elections had an impact as former incumbents became superannuated. Also, an increase in the size of the legislature (as in 1947, 1962, 1971 and 1976; and the award of bonus seats in 1987, 1996 and 2008) would affect the returning incumbents' membership percentage in the new House.
The second aspect is the cumulative effect of the repeated re-election of incumbents. This effect is demonstrated in the Table below which tallies the combined number of years of legislative service of all members, as well as the average. The Table shows a gradual increase in cumulative experience from 1924 to 1939 followed by a decline in the war years and the post-war period. Starting in 1962 there was a sizable increase in years of prior legislative service. But this is followed by substantial declines in 1996 and 1998 -- elections in which several members with extraordinarily long legislative tenures did not return to parliament: Wistin Abela, George Hyzler, Freddie Micallef, Ugo Mifsud Bonnici, Vincent Moran and Filippo Muscat in 1996; followed by Anton Tabone and Dom Mintoff in 1998.
The overall pattern is the emergence of parliaments that are increasingly professionalized. The figures are even more impressive when one considers that "legislative experience" counts only the length of each parliamentary term and does not include the sometimes lengthy intervals between dissolution and a new election.
The average figures in graphic form:
