Economic Shocks, Party Competition and Turnout

• In Event: Political Economy of Advanced Capitalism

Abstract

In this paper we investigate, form a comparative perspective, how the 2008 economic crisis has affected the relationship between economic inequality and political inequality. Drawing on recent literature by Pontusson and Rueda (2010) and Anderson and Beramendi (2012) we formulate a set of novel hypotheses to explain the relationship between economic inequality, party competition and turnout. We argue that parties’ mobilization strategies play a key role in conditioning the relationship between economic inequality and political inequality. Specifically, we expect that countries in which political parties compete and mobilize low-income voters through programmatic competition along the economic dimension should be the ones in which electoral participation has increased the most when inequality has increased. Instead, when the basis of party competition are less programmatic, we expect a much lower degree of mobilization of low-income voters given similar increases in economic inequality. As a result, we expect a less pronounced negative relationship between economic inequality and political inequality with more programmatic basis of party competition when economic inequality increases. And vice versa, we expect an exacerbation of the relationship between economic and political inequality when economic inequality increases and party competition is not programmatic. In order to test these hypotheses, we exploit a cross-country integrated file with CSES individual-level data on turnout. We estimate two-stage weighted regression models employing a difference-in-difference approach, estimating the relationship between income quintiles and turnout before and after the 2008 economic crisis. The results show that the differences in income-turnout slopes between low-income (bottom quintiles) and high-income voters (upper quintiles) have become less important in countries with more programmatic competition when economic inequality has risen. Overall, this paper has important implications for our understanding of the determinants of political inequality in the aftermath of the economic crisis. Most importantly, the paper illustrates that there is not a deterministic relationship between economic and political inequality. Instead, parties’ mobilization strategies seem to play a key role in moderating the effects of economic inequality on electoral participation, especially among low-income voters.

Authors

• Francesc Amat, IPERG - University of Barcelona

• Pablo Beramendi, Duke University