Political Leaders, Economic Hardship and Support for the Left

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Abstract

Does the background of political leaders affect voters’ evaluation of political leaders? If so, under what condition? Even though growing studies of political leaders have explored the role of political leaders on various policy outcomes, little is known how citizens evaluate political leaders’ material backgrounds. Lack of systematic understanding on how politicians’ personal experience relates to citizens’ voting decisions is surprising given that many politicians tend to emphasize their own personal experience such as, “son of mill workers”, “child of hope from poor family”, and “daughter of poor immigrants from” to make their personal life experiences as more appealing choices for voters.

I argue that voters assign different meaning to left and right candidates when they evaluate politicians’ material background. On the one hand, personal experience of economic hardship is likely to be interpreted as more beneficial experience for left-leaning candidates. Voters would have greater beliefs on politicians with experience of economic hardship to better address social policy problems such as poverty reduction and decrease in inequality than other politicians. It is because voters recognize that these leaders’ socialization processes would nurture them to be more sympathetic to the situation of those who would benefit from government redistribution and poverty reduction programs. Thus, politicians from left parties with personal experience of economic hardship electorally benefit more than other politicians without such an experience. However, such an experience may not be interpreted that politicians have better understanding for initiating right-leaning policies such as keeping fiscal balance and low inflation rates than others because such an experience is not directly related to these right-leaning policies. Thus, political leaders with experience of economic hardship from the right parties would have only limited or no gain from their experience of economic hardship.

Furthermore, I argue that the relationship between economic hardship experience and politicians’ vote gains would be conditional on the political context. Specifically, the effect of economic hardship experience would be weaker if rival candidates have experiences of economic hardship. If rival candidates also share similar material experiences, it would be hard for voters to evaluate candidates’ quality differentials based on their material experiences, thus they would be more likely to use other factors to determine their voting decisions.

Using an original data for material background of presidential candidates and official election data in 18 Latin American countries between 1992 and 2018, I find that left presidential candidates with experience of economic hardship greatly enjoy electoral gains than others. I also find that this effect would be greatly pronounced if other candidates do not have experiences of economic hardship in a given election. Using micro-level analysis, I also find that voters who put greater values on reduction of poverty and decrease in economic inequality are more likely to support politicians with economic hardship experiences than other politicians, implying that voters use economic hardship experience as a psychological cue to evaluate whether these candidates have the capacity to deal with certain policy issues. This paper contributes to the growing literature of political economy of political leaders by clarifying that citizens have an understanding of the role of political leaders on various policy outcomes and utilize this information when they evaluate political candidates. Also, this study suggests that literature on voting behaviors and public opinion need to pay more attention to material backgrounds of politicians and political leaders.

Author

• Sung Min Han, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies