Category: economics

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Economic vote and globalization

Economic vote and globalization before and during the Great Recession

Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties – DOI: 10.1080/17457289.2019.1697881
 

The Great Recession undoubtedly reduced the electoral prospects of incumbent parties, coherently with the expectations of the economic vote theory. Yet, the exceptionality of the period may have displaced other elements of that theory, such as, for instance, the moderating impact that globalization is supposed to have on the retrospective mechanism. By using an original dataset comparing 168 elections in 38 democratic countries in the period 2000–2015, we detail how the crisis modified and even reversed that conditional effect. Furthermore, we differentiate our results by separating the impact of economic openness from that of political globalization. In so doing, we improve our understanding of the mechanisms that trigger the conditional effect on the economic vote in normal and exceptional times.

Dataset and do file

KEYWORDS: Economic vote, Great Recession, globalization
 
Pic credit: https://amzn.to/36R2tUG
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It’s the economy, stupid

It’s the economy, stupid. Votare in tempo di crisi

La crisi economica ha messo a dura prova la sopravvivenza dei governi nella maggior parte delle democrazie avanzate. Essa ha inoltre contribuito all’allontanamento dei cittadini dai processi di rappresentanza, alimentando la delegittimazione dei partiti tradizionali e favorendo la radicalizzazione della competizione politica così come il successo di nuove formazioni prive di un vero progetto politico. Le teorie del voto economico hanno da tempo documentato come i comportamenti elettorali siano influenzati dall’andamento dell’economia. Tuttavia, diversamente dagli effetti prodotti dai normali alti e bassi dei mercati, la Grande Recessione rischia di lasciare una pesante eredità ai regimi democratici, erodendo il funzionamento e la fiducia nel principale meccanismo della rappresentanza politica in modi che l’attuale ripresa fatica a mitigare.

Introduzione
1. La teoria del voto economico
2. La Grande Recessione
3. Gli effetti della crisi: disoccupazione e scelte di voto
4. Decomporre il voto economico
5. Voto economico e oltre: tre analisi within-case
6. Italia 2013: un voto retrospettivo sul governo tecnico
7. Spagna 2015: economia e corruzione nel voto retrospettivo
8. Germania 2013: il voto retrospettivo quando l’economia funziona
9. Conclusioni. Votare in tempo di crisi

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Retrospective voting in the Italian 2013 election: a sub-national perspective

Italian political science review (2017)

The Italian 2013 election ended the period of bipolarism that characterized the so-called ‘Second Republic’, and paved the way for new parties such as the Five Star Movement.
We investigate that election, which took place after the technocratic government led by Mario Monti, through the analytical lenses of the retrospective theory of economic voting applied at the provincial level. Local unemployment rates shape the electoral performances
of those parties that were more supportive and sympathetic to the caretaker executive, thus confirming a distinction between incumbent and non-incumbent even in that critical and politically undecided election. We further contribute to the literature on retrospective voting by relaxing the locally untenable assumption of independence among the units. Making use of spatial regression models, we demonstrate the relevance of both the internal  and contiguous economies, and their relative impact due to the different size of the provinces.

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