Globalisation and Support for Social-Democracy

• In Event: Preferences for Redistribution and Representation

Abstract

In this paper we explain why socialdemocracy is no longer a relevant electoral focal point in most of industrialised democracies. We argue that globalisation and the spread of IT technologies has pushed these parties and their voters in opposite directions. Socialdemocratic parties adapted to globalisation by making important policy concesions that eroded their credibility as parties delivering redistribution. On the side of the voters, globalisation and the adoption of IT technologies increased the level of socio-economic risk among voters from different social-class origins. The typical expectation would be that these voters at risk demanded more redistribution and, hence, would vote for socialdemocratic parties. We argue, however, that given the policy concesions made by these parties in the past, voters no longer trust traditional socialdemocratic parties and, consequently, no longer support them. We find empirical support for these theoretical claims using individual and aggregate data. Exploiting data from the BHPS panel survey in the UK, we show how preferences for redistribution exist while support for the Labour party declines. We confirm these results by creating a novel dataset that combines electoral and census data at the district level for all general elections in the United Kingdom since 1981.

Authors

• Rubén Ruiz-Rufino, King's College London

• Lee Savage, King's College London