The electoral consequences of the financial and economic crisis in Europe

The electoral consequences of the Great Recession are analysed in this article by combining insights from economic voting theories and the literature on party system change. Taking cues from these two theoretical perspectives, the impact of the Great Recession on the stability and change of Western, Central and Eastern European party systems is assessed. The article starts from the premise that, in order to fully assess the impact of the contemporary crisis, classic economic voting hypotheses focused on incumbent parties need to be combined with accounts of long‐term party system change provided by realignment and dealignment theories. The empirical analysis draws on an original dataset of election results and economic and political indicators in 30 European democracies. The results indicate that during the Great Recession economic strain was associated with sizable losses for incumbent parties and an increasing destabilisation of Western European party systems, while its impact was significantly weaker in Central and Eastern European countries, where political rather than economic failures appeared to be more relevant. In line with the realignment perspective, the results also reveal that in Western Europe populist radical right, radical left and non‐mainstream parties benefited the most from the economic hardship, while support for mainstream parties decreased further.     

Economic grievances and political protest

How do economic grievances affect citizens’ inclination to protest? Given rising levels of inequality and widespread economic hardship in the aftermath of the Great Recession, this question is crucial for political science: if adverse economic conditions depress citizens’ engagement, as many contributions have argued, then the economic crisis may well feed into a crisis of democracy. However, the existing research on the link between economic grievances and political participation remains empirically inconclusive. It is argued in this article that this is due to two distinct shortcomings, which are effectively addressed by combining the strengths of political economy and social movement theories. Based on ESS and EU-SILC data from 2006–2012, as well as newly collected data on political protest in 28 European countries, a novel, more fine-grained conceptualisation of objective economic grievances considerably improves our understanding of the direct link between economic grievances and protest behaviour. While structural economic disadvantage (i.e., the level of grievances) unambiguously de-mobilises individuals, the deterioration of economic prospects (i.e., a change in grievances) instead increases political activity. Revealing these two countervailing effects provides an important clarification that helps reconcile many seemingly conflicting findings in the existing literature. Second, the article shows that the level of political mobilisation substantially moderates this direct link between individual hardship and political activity. In a strongly mobilised environment, even structural economic disadvantage is no longer an impediment to political participation. There is a strong political message in this interacting factor: if the presence of organised and visible political action is a decisive signal for citizens that conditions the micro-level link between economic grievances and protest, then democracy itself – that is, organised collective action – can help sustain political equality and prevent the vicious circle of democratic erosion.     

National protest agenda and the dimensionality of party politics: Evidence from four East-Central European democracies

Contemporary democracies show considerable differences in the issue composition of their protest politics, which tends to remain relatively stable over time. In countries like Germany or the Czech Republic, the vast majority of protests have been mobilised around sociocultural issues, such as human rights, peace, nuclear power or the environment, and only a tiny portion of protest has focused on economic issues. At the opposite extreme, protest in France or Poland usually has a strongly economic character and voices demands relating to material redistribution and social policy. What lies behind the cross-country differences in national protest agendas? In this article, the national protest agenda depends on what issues mainstream political parties are contesting: the content and strength of the master-issue dimension. In reference to the literature on the multidimensional political space and niche political parties, one should expect that there is a substitutive effect; where the stronger a specific master-issue dimension is in party politics, the less salient that issue dimension is in protest politics. This substitutive effect results from the tendency of electoral politics to reduce political conflict to a single-dimension equilibrium, which decreases the importance of other issues and relegates the contest over secondary, niche issues to the realm of policy-seeking strategies, with protest being a common type of this political strategy. In party systems where single-dimension equilibrium does not exist and the master-issue dimension is weaker, the same dynamics result in a more convergent relationship between party and protest politics and a greater similarity between the protest- and party-system agendas. To investigate this theory, the national protest agendas in four countries are examined. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia show four combinations of two crucial factors that are not available in the old Western democracies: the content and the strength of the master-issue dimension. The study draws on an original dataset of protest events organised in the four countries between 1993 and 2010, and on qualitative and quantitative data on issue dimensions of party politics obtained from studies on party politics and expert surveys. The results show that in the Czech Republic, where the master-issue dimension has remained strongly economic, protest has been predominantly sociocultural. In Poland between 1993 and 2001 and Hungary between 1993 and 2006, the master-issue dimensions are strongly sociocultural, while protest is predominantly economic. There is no single-dimension equilibrium in party politics in Slovakia or in post-2001 Poland and mainstream parties compete on both economic and sociocultural issues. Consequently, the substitutive dynamics between party and protest politics is weaker and the issue agendas in party and protest arenas are here more alike.     

Economic voting in provincial elections: Revisiting electoral accountability in the Canadian provinces

ABSTRACT

We examine the outcomes of the provincial elections having been held in Canada since the Great Recession and compare them with outcomes from past decades. Given the severity of the 2008 financial crisis, we test for whether provincial governments’ electoral fortunes over the recent period have been negatively impacted by this important economic shock. Our analyses of aggregate-level provincial electoral outcomes: (1) confirm that provincial incumbent parties are held accountable for provincial economic conditions; (2) show that this provincial economic voting pattern has been heightened during the financial crisis; and (3) demonstrate that provincial incumbents also incur vote share losses when national economic conditions worsen and their respective family party is in power at the federal level, although this referendum voting pattern appears to have been unaffected by the financial crisis.     

Different worlds of contention? Protest in Northwestern,Southern and Eastern Europe

Despite the voluminous literature on the ‘normalisation of protest’, the protest arena is seen as a bastion of left-wing mobilisation. While citizens on the left readily turn to the streets, citizens on the right only settle for it as a ‘second best option’. However, most studies are based on aggregated cross-national comparisons or only include Northwestern Europe. We contend the aggregate-level perspective hides different dynamics of protest across Europe. Based on individual-level data from the European Social Survey (2002–2016), we investigate the relationship between ideology and protest as a key component of the normalisation of protest. Using hierarchical logistic regression models, we show that while protest is becoming more common, citizens with different ideological views are not equal in their protest participation across the three European regions. Instead of a general left predominance, we find that in Eastern European countries, right-wing citizens are more likely to protest than those on the left. In Northwestern and Southern European countries, we find the reverse relationship, left-wing citizens are more likely to protest than their right-wing counterparts. Lessons drawn from the protest experience in Northwestern Europe characterised by historical mobilisation by the New Left are of limited use for explaining the ideological composition of protest in the Southern and Eastern European countries. We identify historical and contemporary regime access as the mechanism underlying regional patterns: citizens with ideological views that were historically in opposition are more likely to protest. In terms of contemporary regime access, we find that partisanship enhances the effect of ideology, while ideological distance from the government has a different effect in the three regions. As protest gains in importance as a form of participation, the paper contributes to our understanding of regional divergence in the extent to which citizens with varying ideological views use this tool.     

International Constraints and Electoral Decisions: Does the Room to Maneuver Attenuate Economic Voting?

Prominent studies of electoral accountability and economic voting suggest that government constraints and international financial structures decrease the economic vote. The proposed mechanism is often labeled as the “room to maneuver,” and it posits that because elected officials have limited space to propose and implement economic policy, politicians can shirk responsibility, and thus voters are less likely to place voting weights on the economy. However, results from elections that took place in Europe during the Great Recession and scholarly research on economic voting in these elections cast serious doubts on the causal mechanism. This article directly tests this mechanism with a survey experiment using data from Greece (the country most affected by the debt crisis). The results suggest that although the economic vote is strong and substantive, its size does not vary across the room to maneuver treatments. This finding informs the literature on economic voting and carries out important implications for party strategies with respect to exogenous policy impositions and their electoral effects.     

Increased economic salience or blurring of responsibility? Economic voting during the Great Recession

There is a puzzle which emerged following the Eurozone crisis: whereas the salience of the economy suggests an increase in economic voting, the realization that economic policies have become Europeanised may blur the responsibility of national governments, thus decreasing economic perceptions' weight on electoral choices. Do these mechanisms exclude each other? Do they refer to different groups of the electorate? We first examine the longitudinal trends of economic voting from 2002 to 2015 in three bailed out countries, namely Ireland, Portugal and Spain, to see if the economy's salience during the Great Recession increased the relevance of the economic perceptions in these countries. Secondly, making use of a unique media dataset of the last 16 years we test whether exposure to major mainstream newspapers that focus on the EU mitigates economic voting. On average, economic voting increased following the crisis. However, individuals who are more informed about the EU tend to use economic voting to a lesser extent, given they are more aware of the national government's limited room for manoeuvre.     

Economic vulnerability and economic voting in 14 OECD countries

The economic voting literature shows that good economic performance bolsters the electoral prospects of incumbents. However, disagreement persists as to whether voters in vulnerable economic conditions are more likely to engage in economic voting. It is argued in this article that a crucial factor in explaining individual‐level variation in economic voting is the degree of exposure to economic risks, because risk exposure affects the saliency of the economy in voting decisions. In particular, the focus is on job insecurity and employability as key determinants of economic voting patterns. The article hypothesises that the extent of economic voting is greater in voters who are more vulnerable to unemployment and less employable in case of job loss. Support for these hypotheses is found in a test with a dataset that combines survey data on incumbent support with occupational unemployment rates and other measures of exposure to economic risks.     

Income inequality and election outcomes in OECD countries: New evidence following the Great Recession of 2008–2009

Using data on national parliamentary election outcomes in 32 OECD countries from 1975 to 2013, we investigate the importance of economic voting. We focus on the relevance of income inequality which has resurfaced to the forefront of public debate since the last global economic downturn. Additionally, we examine whether the degree of economic voting varies with the political orientation of the incumbent government. Finally, we check whether the Great Recession of 2008–2009 alters the degree to which voters hold the incumbent government, specifically left parties, responsible for poor economic performance and rising inequality. We find that economic growth is the most robust variable for economic voting, before and after the Great Recession. The vote share for left-leaning parties declines when income inequality rises during normal economic times. However, voters are more likely to vote for left-wing incumbents if domestic income inequality and unemployment rate rose during the Great Recession.     

Red Europe versus no Europe? The impact of attitudes towards the EU and the economic crisis on radical-left voting

The 2014 European Parliament election saw a relatively large increase in the size of radical-left parties (RLPs), particularly in Western Europe. This article aims to provide new ways of thinking about the dynamics of radical-left voting by analysing the changing role of attitudes towards the European Union in explaining support for RLPs at European Parliament elections during the Great Recession. It is argued that the Europeanisation of economic issues during the financial crisis, together with the particular kind of Euroscepticism advocated by these parties, have enabled them to successfully attract a heterogeneous pool of voters. Using the 2009 and 2014 European Election Studies, it is shown that the effect of negative opinions about the EU on support for RLPs increased significantly during the crisis. In addition, support for RLPs also increased among voters with positive views of the EU who were nevertheless highly dissatisfied with the economic situation.     

Protesting with the ballot: Diffusion of methods of electoral protest in Spain

This paper shows the pattern of diffusion of a tool of protest – blank and null voting (BNV)– in the context of Spanish national elections. It shows how the 2004 protest mobilization by Batasuna (a Basque nationalist party) predicts null voting by identifying the relationship of this form of protest with both the level of grievance of the population and the political resources of the mobilizers. The paper then demonstrates that this large and visible use of a protest tactic is followed by a heterogeneous diffusion process after the main mobilized protest event and beyond the supporters of the original mobilizer. In the 2008 national election, across Spain, citizens with grievances toward the political system and, most importantly, with political affinity with the initiators were the ones to update their individual protest repertoire with this electoral protest tool.     

Action repertoires in contentious episodes: What determines governments’ and challengers’ action strategies? A cross-national analysis

This paper studies the interactions between governments, challengers and third party actors in the context of 60 contentious policy episodes in 12 European countries during the Great Recession. More specifically, we focus on the endogenous dynamics that develop in the course of these episodes. Based on the combination of a new event dataset, which allows for the construction of action sequences, and a novel method (contentious episode analysis) to study the impact of actor-specific actions on subsequent actions within a sequence, we test a set of hypotheses on the determinants of actors’ overall action repertoires within specific contexts. Overall, our results are more supportive of the interdependence of cooperation than of the interdependence of conflict: the repression-radical mobilisation-external legitimation of conflictive behaviour nexus is weaker than the concession-cooperation-mediation nexus. While the literature tends to focus on conflict dynamics, we find that there is a more systematic dynamics of cooperation in the course of contentious episodes.     

Creating critical citizens? Anti-austerity protests and public opinion

Following the Great Recession, many countries witnessed large protests against the austerity policies their governments implemented. What was their effect on public opinion? I argue that these protests can make citizens more critical of elite performance, but not more disaffected or undemocratic. Anti-austerity protests voice civil society actors instead of elites in the public debate, making that debate more relatable. Such increased relatability can make individuals more comfortable expressing their own dissatisfaction, and it can make them perceive that their voice is more valued. Taking advantage of a demonstration happening during the fieldwork of the fifth wave of the European Social Survey in Portugal, I find exposure to the protest decreased satisfaction and trust in elites. I find no evidence that the protest made individuals more disaffected from politics or more undemocratic. Supporting the argument regarding the mechanism, the protest increased the number of claims by civil society actors reported in the press and its effect was stronger for individuals worse represented by institutionalized elites. These findings highlight the democratic importance of unconventional forms of participation, and deepen our understanding of their interplay with conventional politics.     

Electoral impacts of a failed uprising: Evidence from Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement

Do anti-regime protests in electoral autocracies benefit the opposition by shifting the political preference of the bystanders? We seek an answer to this question by examining the electoral impact of Hong Kong's Umbrella Movement. Analyzing the election outcomes at the polling-station level shortly after the movement, we find that protest exposure, as measured by spatial proximity to protest sites, is positively correlated with the decline of electoral support for the opposition. Individual level surveys indicate that the adverse influences of protest exposure manifest themselves in elevating by-standing citizens' sense of economic insecurity, even though the movement causes no persistent income loss, while enhancing political efficacy.     

Protest Actions against the European Union, 1992–2007

In spite of the enormous amount of attention devoted to the process of European integration, the study of protest actions that take the European Union as their target is only incipient and suffers from a lack of up-to-date systematic information. This research note presents new data on protests in the member states which, directly or indirectly, targeted the Union between 1992 and 2007. These data show that the increase in protest mobilisation anticipated by previous scholars has not taken place and that the advances in formal European integration have not been matched by any corresponding increase in protests targeting the EU.     

Does counter-mobilization contain right-wing populist movements? Evidence from Germany

Right-wing populist (RWP) movements have been on the rise in Western democracies. Outside of party politics, such movements regularly organize demonstrations against political elites and minority groups. At the same time, civil society coalitions have mobilized against these movements. Yet we know little about the effect of counter-demonstrations on RWP protest activities. We derive competing theoretical expectations from previous work. On the one hand, counter-mobilization reduces mobilization because the original movement is less likely to achieve its goals (expected utility/costs). On the other hand, clashes and standoffs between opposing movements facilitate mobilization through polarization and anger (identity/emotions). We empirically analyze movement–countermovement dynamics using a new city-level event dataset on street protests by the German Pegida movement and its opponents. In our quantitative analysis, we investigate how counter-mobilization is associated with the onset of Pegida protests, their intensity in terms of participant numbers, and their demobilization. Counter-mobilization does not prevent protest onset, but large counter-demonstrations are associated with larger subsequent Pegida protests, and violence against Pegida supporters reduces the likelihood that they will stop protesting.     

The politics of social assistance in South Africa: How protests and electoral politics shape the Child Support Grant

Since the 1990s, South Africa, like many other countries from the Global South, has provided extensive social assistance for the poor. The literature on these policies, however, is largely dominated by structuralist accounts, and it largely overlooks political factors. We conducted quantitative analyses regarding the South African flagship Child Support Grant (CSG) program and investigated how contentious and electoral political dynamics jointly shape the provision of this program. Based on a logistic regression analysis, we measured the effect of protest participation, voting preference, and their interaction on the likelihood of CSG receipt. Our analysis showed that CSG receipt is much higher among “uncontentious supporters” of ANC and “contentious nonsupporters,” as well as those who join violent protests. This lends support for our argument that CSG is being used as a tool for electoral politics and containment of unrest, providing fresh evidence for political mediation theories of social policy.     

The electoral consequences of two great crises

Who benefits from deep economic crises: the left, the right or neither? On the basis of evidence from elections in 1929–1933 and 2008–2013 in all states that were democracies in both periods, it is argued in this article that the electoral consequences of the Great Depression and the Great Recession were surprisingly similar: in both periods, right‐wing parties were at first more successful than left‐wing parties, although this effect only lasted for a few years. The manner in which a crisis develops over time should be taken into account when examining the effects of deep economic downturns on the electoral fortunes of the left and the right.     

How electoral vulnerability affects pension politics: Introducing a concept,measure and empirical application

Are electorally vulnerable politicians really less likely to support controversial legislation, such as pension reforms? While the literature on welfare state retrenchment has increasingly pointed to the role of electoral factors in the dynamics of social policy cutbacks, there are few studies that actually measure the magnitude of electoral pressure and its consequent impact on the politics of reform. To this end, the authors have developed a quantitative measure of the electoral vulnerability of politicians and tested its impact on pension reform outcomes using an original dataset comprising 16 Western European countries from 1980 to 2003. In line with expectations, the results show that the impact of electoral vulnerability on reform depends upon the system of interest intermediation. In corporatist systems, electoral vulnerability indeed impedes reform. But in pluralist systems, increased electoral vulnerability is associated with higher levels of reform. This is because unions in corporatist (but not in pluralist) systems can exploit electoral vulnerability in pre‐legislative bargaining, and thus pressure politicians. Consequently, this study has broader implications for the differential responsiveness of democracies to redistributive issues more generally.     

The European Union and political behaviour: The shadow of the Great Recession

The symposium aims to analyse the politicisation of the European issue following the onset of the Eurozone crisis, in particular its impact on individual attitudes and voting both at the national and supranational level. By way of an introduction, we address the state of the art on the importance of the Eurozone crisis for EU politicisation, as well as outlining each article and its contribution. While our authors may sometimes focus on different dependent variables, they all speak to the question of whether the Great Recession made a lasting difference, and whether EU politicisation matters. Most articles are longitudinal, and test for changes due to the crisis (Dassonneville, Lewis- Beck and Jabbour; Ruiz-Rufino; Talving and Vasilopoulou; Jurado and Navarrete). But preoccupation with the Great Recession is also present in the articles assessing the political learning that unfolded from it (Ruiz-Rufino), or the ones which investigate whether EU effects can be detected during the post-crisis years (Talving and Vasilopoulou; Lobo and Pannico; Heyne and Lobo). Despite the diversity of approaches, and certain differences in findings, each article contributes to a major debate ongoing in the literature, especially three key debates which have arisen: the crisis’ impact on European party systems, economic voting, and the degree of legitimacy of democratic systems.