Economic Hardship, Political Corruption and the Emergence of Challenger Parties

• In Event: Corruption and Electoral Behavior

Abstract

We investigate whether the political instability generated by the Great Recession in Spain can be explained by the size of the economic shock itself or is due to a deterioration of political life originated during the pre-crisis period. More concretely, we estimate the impact of spatially localized unemployment shocks on the vote for the two challenger parties that emerged during this period (‘Podemos’and ‘Ciudadanos’). To account for the underlying political deterioration, we also look at the effect of spatially localized corruption experiences. We find, first, that both the strength of the unemployment shock and the recent history of corruption had an effect on the increase in the vote for challenger parties. Second, we find that the effects of the unemployment shock and of corruption reinforce each other: the impact of the unemployment increase is larger in places with a history of corruption and the effect of corruption is stronger in the places hit harder by the crisis. Therefore, it seems that political instability in Spain has both economic and political roots.

Author

• Albert Solé-Ollé, University of Barcelona