Twisted Fiscal Policy and Political Engagement

• In Event: Panel II on Democratic Backsliding/Erosion

Abstract

The long-term decline in voter turnout across developed countries has received much academic attention. While some scholars attribute it to fiscal austerity, which became common since the 1980s, others point out that austerity leads to more political engagement. However, these previous studies assume that austerity has an invariant effect on political participation, whoever conducted it. This study, therefore, aims at addressing whether the effect of fiscal austerity on political participation differs depending on government partisanship. According to the seminal work by Schäfer and Streeck (2013), we can expect that austerity measures conducted by leftist governments have more severly negative effect on political participation than those by rightist government, partly because the leftist austerity measures reduce political efficacy among voters. On the other hand, this study, which analyzes a multi-level data in European countries, shows that, generally speaking, austerity measures have negative impact on political participation, especially turnout and unconventional participation (e.g. signing petition, contacting politicians and participating in boycotts), but that the negative effect is mitigated under the leftist governments. This result implies that the leftist austerity may lead to higher political participation by making people betrayed and, thus, provoking their anger. Moreover, this study shows that the leftist austerity leads to more vote share of far-right populism parties. Therefore, this study provides an ambiguous implication on the future of democracy: on the one hand, people’s voice is emerging again even in the age of austerity, which implies optimistic future of democracy, but, on the other hand, the voice foster a threat to democracy.

Author

• Junpei Suzuki, Waseda University