Attitudes on Austerity: Class, Partisanship, and Fiscal Preferences in Europe

• In Event: Which Distributive Policies Resonate with Working Class Voters in Europe?

Abstract

The “austerity settlement” has come to define the post-crisis European political economy. Since 2010, parties from across Europe’s political mainstream have implemented austerity and despite the apparent conflict with the interests of their traditional constituents, even parties from the left have acquiesced to this settlement. Existing research claims that these policies have little impact on political support for governments and are supported by the electorate (e.g. Alesina et al., 1998; Brender and Drazen, 2008; Arias and Stasavage, 2018). Yet, the political consequences of austerity during the Great Recession have been dramatic, especially for the centre-left. This paper uses data from cross-national surveys and novel survey experiments to address this puzzle and to re-analyse attitudes towards austerity. It focuses on the preferences of the working and middle classes to explore which fiscal policies resonate with different socio-economic classes in Europe. The findings suggest that a large amount of voters are “fiscal conservatives” and support fiscal consolidation in principle. Based on their private experience of struggling with household debt even working class voters support balanced budgets. Yet, there are only few “fiscal hawks” who prioritise government debt and are willing to cut government spending or raise taxes to achieve fiscal consolidation. Especially left-wing voters tend to oppose expenditure-based fiscal adjustments, a position that is contrary to the policies that the centre-left supported during the Great Recession. The paper, therefore, helps to make sense of the current crisis of social democracy and contributes to a better understanding of the electoral consequences of austerity.

Author

• Björn Kristen Bremer, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies