Reconsidering individual-level heterogeneity in economic voting

This paper proposes a general theory of individual-level heterogeneity in economic voting based on the perspective that the strength of the relationship varies with factors that influence the relevance of the economic evaluation to the vote choice. We posit that the electoral relevance of the economic evaluation increases with the strength of partisanship as well as political sophistication. Given the strong correlation between partisanship and sophistication, this theoretical perspective casts doubt on extant evidence that more sophisticated voters are more likely to hold the incumbent party electorally accountable for macroeconomic performance since this result might be an artifact of failing to control for the economic evaluation being more relevant to the vote choice of stronger partisans. Our statistical investigation of this question finds no significant evidence that sophistication conditions the economic voting relationship once the conditioning effect of partisanship is included in the model. This finding suggests that individual-level heterogeneity in the strength of the economic voting relationship is largely due to stronger partisans voting more consistently with their national economic evaluation than to more sophisticated voters being more policy-oriented by holding the incumbent party more electorally accountable for macroeconomic performance.     

Partisanship,media and the objective economy: Sources of individual-level economic assessments

Economic voting studies have repeatedly shown that voter's assessment of incumbent economic performance is important for the vote decision. However, there is little work explaining how individuals form their economic assessments. Utilizing individual-level data from Turkey, we find that variation in retrospective assessments can actually be predicted by individual income growth rates over the previous year, and the association is stronger for pocketbook assessments. Nonetheless, partisanship and media are important sources of bias, especially for sociotropic assessments. Controlled for partisanship, viewers of pro-government media are more likely to think that the national economy has done better than their own household over the last year, and also more likely to believe that the economy would fare worse if the incumbent is replaced. The findings testify both to the capacity of the individuals to anchor their assessments to personal experience, and to the media's ability to weaken this anchor.     

Dimensions of the economic vote: Valence,positional and patrimony voting in Portugal's 2011 elections

This article contrasts three dimensions of economic voting, namely valence, positional and patrimony voting. Whereas the first two dimensions have been frequently explored, the patrimony variable has scarcely been tested as an explanatory variable of voting behaviour. It measures the electors' assets (both risky and non-risky), and seeks to capture the elector's wealth at election time. Using the 2011 post-election survey carried out in Portugal following the June elections, the data show that comparing of the three dimensions, valence is the most important. It was found that patrimony variables, although not significant in a comprehensive vote model, are important explanatory factors of party identification, itself a key variable of vote choice in Portugal.     

Political knowledge,the decision calculus,and proximity voting

This paper employs an online voting simulation to examine how the vote decision process affects the vote choice. We focus on proximity voting, an empirically powerful but informationally demanding model of voter behavior. Holding contextual factors constant, we find that more politically knowledgeable individuals engage in a deeper and broader decision process prior to casting their ballot, and, in turn, a more detailed decision process boosts the likelihood that one will vote proximately. In addition, we find that detailed decision processes have a stronger link with proximity voting among the most knowledgeable individuals, who are able to skillfully engage with new information.     

Two types of economic voting: How economic conditions jointly affect vote choice and turnout

The economic voting literature mostly looks at vote choice, ignoring potential effects on turnout. Studies that do focus on the latter often ignore the former, and come to contradictory conclusions. I develop a model of economic voting that jointly incorporates vote choice and abstention due to alienation or indifference. Analyzing ten elections with validated turnout data and conducting empirically informed simulations, I make two contributions. First, I show that “turnout switching” accounts for up to one third of total economic voting. This second type of economic voting is more common when the number of parties is low and responsibility is dispersed. Second, I show that a bad economy moves some people to abstain while having the opposite effect on others. The aggregate effect is ambiguous and related to macro-conditions in a non-linear way. This explains contradictory findings in the literature.     

Past is still present: Micro-level comparisons of conventional vs. transitional economic voting in three Polish elections

Using survey data from three Polish parliamentary elections, we provide the first systematic micro-level test contrasting a standard incumbency-based model of economic voting with a transitional economic voting model in the post-communist context. To do so, we introduce a novel temporal component to micro-level studies of economic voting that supplements standard short-term retrospective economic evaluations (e.g., “do you feel the economy has improved in the past 12 months?”) with longer “transitional” retrospective economic evaluations (e.g., “do you feel the economy has improved since the collapse of communism?”). Our analyses reveal a nuanced picture suggesting multiple paths for economic influences on voting in Poland. We find evidence consistent with the standard incumbency-based approach, but only for the specific set of evaluations to which the theory is most appropriately applied: short-term retrospective economic evaluations and the vote for incumbent parties. By contrast, the transitional model is strongly supported by evidence that evaluations of changes in economic conditions since the collapse of communism (“long-term economic evaluations”) have an effect on the vote for a range of parties. We demonstrate as well that these results are robust to model specification and generational effects.     

The price of personalizing politics: Political distrust and economic performance in Latin America, 1996–2006

While research has provided evidence that culture and institutional performance shape individual level trust in political institutions, scholars have neglected to adequately estimate the effect of political institutions and macroeconomic conditions on trust. Using data from the World Value Surveys for eleven Latin American cases, we test if countries with “partyizing” electoral systems - those with rules that encourage voters to hold the party, not individuals, accountable for government performance - experience lower levels of distrust in political parties and the legislature in times of poor economic conditions than those countries with “personalizing” electoral rules. Our analysis shows that the macro political and economic context largely conditions the impact of culture and institutional performance on political trust.     

Rules,institutions and the economic vote: clarifying clarity of responsibility

Abstract

Institutions are thought to matter for vote choice, and work on economic voting is exemplary in this regard. The strength of the economic vote varies considerably cross-nationally and this seems to emanate from differences in the clarity of responsibility. Still, this conceptual frame, dominant in the field, appears to have some cracks. First, almost all work presents analyses of the economic vote in smaller, split samples of low- and high-clarity contexts separately. Second, the literature appears rather dispersed when the conceptual and empirical indicators are examined. The article attempts to overcome these limitations by analysing a large pool of democratic elections with a series of objective indicators. It investigates these indicators separately, and as components within two cumulative indices (institutional rules and power patterns). The results indicate that, even though there are indications of differences in the strength of the economic vote in high- and low-clarity contexts respectively, institutional rules or power patterns fail to significantly deflect the overall electoral impact of economic growth.     

Shocks and oscillations: The political economy of Hungary

While economic voting studies exist for the new democracies in post-communist Europe, time-series vote functions are scarce. Here, we fill this void by testing how public support for the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP) responds to political shocks and economic oscillations, using monthly data from 2002 to 2009 (N = 83). As the economy fluctuates, on both objective and subjective measures, Hungarians reward or punish the Prime Minister’s party in the traditional manner. Political shocks, including the change to an MSZP minority government, the 2006 riots, and the IMF bailout, induced increased support for the party while troops in Iraq and the election campaign led Hungarians to be less supportive of the party. Clearly, government support in Hungary can be explained in political economic terms, despite the newness of democracy and the severe economic uncertainties of the times.     

Economic crisis, party system change, and the dynamics of class voting in Venezuela, 1973–2003

The breakdown of the old catch-all party system in Venezuela, and the sudden rise to power of leftist former coup leader Hugo Chávez provides an instructive case study to examine the sources of party system change, the rise of populism and the politicisation of class. Using nationally representative survey data this paper analyses different models of voting behaviour over time, and examines the extent to which the determinants of electoral choice have changed. It argues that although economic crises during the 1990s undermined support for the existing parties, it did not create a politically salient class-based response. Rather, it created the electoral space for new actors to enter the political stage and articulate new populist issue dimensions. Explanations for the politicisation of social cleavages in Venezuela can therefore best be understood in terms of ‘top-down’ approaches which emphasises the role of political agency in reshaping and re-crafting political identities, rather than more ‘bottom-up’ factors which emphasise the demands that originate within the electorate.     

Political knowledge about electoral rules: Comparing mixed member proportional systems in Germany and New Zealand

Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) electoral systems are considered by some to be “the best of both worlds” because they combine single member district representation with proportional outcomes. Critics, however, maintain that such systems cause voter confusion leading some voters to cast misinformed votes. Survey data from Germany and New Zealand are used to investigate voter's political knowledge of the electoral system and their voting behavior. The findings suggest that knowledge about the electoral system is similar in New Zealand and in Germany. Although some may very well find the system complex, there is no evidence to suggest that a lack of knowledge about the electoral system influences voting behavior. The results undermine the claims made by skeptics who fear that misunderstanding threatens the legitimacy of electoral outcomes.     

Politics by denunciation: Political whistleblowing against members of parliament in Italy

Judicial investigations into politicians are a fundamental component of politics, with these investigations often leading to public scandals. Yet, empirical evidence of the strategic determinants of judicial investigations is intrinsically hard to gather, a problem that has significantly limited the study of this important phenomenon. This paper studies the politics behind judicial investigations by leveraging new data on prosecutors’ informants in 1125 episodes of misbehavior of Italian MPs involved in different crimes (1983–2019). Results provide evidence in favor of a political use of denunciations for corruption crimes: when a party weakens, the likelihood that political enemies denounce past misbehavior of members of the weakened party increases, suggesting that the political use of denunciation is elastic to changes in the electoral performance. Furthermore, weakened MPs are more likely to be accused of misbehavior that happened a long time before the accusation, which further supports the argument that accusations are politically motivated.     

Reaching for profit in the welfare state: Patrimonial economic voting in Denmark

Economic voting has been well-studied in a number of advanced industrial democracies, including Denmark. However, that work has been almost entirely on the valence dimension, i.e., rewarding or punishing government according to whether the overall economy prospers. Recent work has looked at other economic voting dimensions, including patrimony, i.e., the impact of property ownership on the vote. A patrimonial effect has been found in the UK, the US, and France. However, it seems to differ somewhat depending on the welfare-character of the state, with the US at one end and France at the other. Here we examine patrimonial economic voting in a still more extreme welfare state - Denmark. In our analysis of voting in the 2011 parliamentary election, we establish two new findings: 1. patrimonial economic voting exists in Denmark and, 2. its effect is stronger than that for other countries studied thus far.     

Migrants' remittances and economic voting in the Mexican countryside

This study advances and tests hypotheses about the effects of migrants' remittances on political behavior. Analyzing new survey data from Mexico, I find that despite being very poor, respondents who receive remittances tend to view their income as more stable than neighbors who do not receive this money. As a result, remittance recipients have relatively fewer economic grievances and tend to feel more optimistic about economic matters than neighbors who do not receive remittances. According to the economic voter thesis, citizens who are more satisfied with the economy are also less likely to pressure and oppose politicians, particularly incumbents. Analyses indicate that respondents in this sample who receive remittances are indeed less likely to lobby local officials for economic assistance. They were also less likely to mobilize against and punish the incumbent party in the 2006 Mexican presidential election.     

Economic Sanctions and Political Repression: Assessing the Impact of Coercive Diplomacy on Political Freedoms

This article offers a thorough analysis of the unintended impact economic sanctions have on political repression—referred to in this study as the level of the government respect for democratic freedoms and human rights. We argue that economic coercion is a counterproductive policy tool that reduces the level of political freedoms in sanctioned countries. Instead of coercing the sanctioned regime into reforming itself, sanctions inadvertently enhance the regime’s coercive capacity and create incentives for the regime’s leadership to commit political repression. Cross-national time series data support our argument, confirming that the continued use of economic sanctions (even when aimed at promoting political liberalization and respect for human rights) will increase the level of political repression. These findings suggest that both scholars and policy makers should pay more attention to the externalities caused by economic coercion.

The electoral consequences of austerity: economic policy voting in Europe in times of crisis

Abstract

Voters typically observe macroeconomic outcomes in order to evaluate government performance. However, during crises, when the clarity of economic responsibility is poor and the economy is in recession, citizens need additional sources of information in order to form a reasoned opinion. Government policy response is one such source. This study shows on a sample of 24 European nations from 2004, 2009 and 2014 that in the post-crisis period, economic policies have emerged as one of the key predictors of vote choice, with government decisions to pursue fiscal austerity leading to significantly lower levels of incumbent support. Furthermore, the paper tests the possibility that the effect of austerity is conditioned by the clarity of responsibility. In multilevel systems, where policies are externally imposed, voters could be expected to hold incumbents less accountable for unpopular measures. The analysis, however, provides no evidence that policy effects depend on the extent to which national governments share policy responsibilities with supranational and intergovernmental institutions. Accountability for policy actions is primarily attributed at the domestic level as voters are able to identify the decisional role of national governments.     

The multi-store model for economic voting: Rome wasn't built in a day

The 2012 presidential election was closely contested with the media predicting that the unemployment rate announcement just before the election would be the deciding factor. If a single economic indicator could buoy up job approval ratings, delivering positive economic statistics to the voters would be a rational re-election strategy for an incumbent. In contrast, this paper presents a model in which voters do not immediately convert each economic statistic into a performance evaluation. Only after many “rehearsals” do voters convert statistics into a positive or negative evaluation. I take the case of Japan and use a survey experiment and an inverse probability weighting (IPW) estimator to assess whether short-, medium- and long-term performance evaluations form based on voter perception of economic conditions.     

Political Disagreement in Context: The Conditional Effect of Neighborhood Context, Disagreement and Political Talk on Electoral Participation

Despite scholarly interest in determining how exposure to disagreeable political ideas influences political participation, existing research supports few firm conclusions. This paper argues that these varied findings stem from an implicit model of contextual influence that fails to account for the indirect effect of aggregate social contexts. A model of contextual influence is outlined which implies that the neighborhood partisan context moderates the effect of political disagreement in social networks on campaign participation. The evidence shows that network disagreement demobilizes people who are the political minority in their neighborhood, but has no influence on people in the majority. When viewed together, these findings indicate that a person’s relationship to the broader political environment sets distinctive network processes in motion.