The Economic Roots of Cross-National Similarity in Voter Preferences

• In Event: Innovative Approaches to Understanding Voter Preferences

Abstract

We propose that the political preferences of citizens are correlated across national borders as a result of shared economic production and fortunes. We model the empirical implications of the argument by comparing the similarity of countries’ mass political preferences to the similarity of countries’ economies (i.e., sector distribution) as well their participation in unifying economic institutions. The data suggest a strong, plausibly causal effect of economic structure similarity and unifying institutions on the similarity of political preferences --- countries are alike in their politics because they are alike in their economics. These findings bear important implications for our understanding of the political economy of elections and provide nuance and new context for previous findings on policy diffusion.

Authors

• David Fortunato, University of California, San Diego

• Sebastian Juhl, University of Mannheim

• Laron K. Williams, University of Missouri, Columbia