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The electoral advantage of the left in times of fiscal adjustment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 November 2017

Abel Bojar
Abel Bojar*
Affiliation:
European University Institute, Firenze, Italy
*
*E-mail: a.t.bojar@lse.ac.uk
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Abstract

Despite widely held views on fiscal adjustment as a political minefield for government parties, the empirical literature on the issue has been surprisingly inconclusive. A crucial variable that has been often overlooked in the debate is partisan politics. Building on the micro-logic of Albert Hirschman’s ‘exit, voice, and loyalty’ framework, this article offers a novel theoretical perspective on the conditioning impact of partisan government in the electoral arena. Due to their more limited exit options at their disposal, left-wing voters are less likely to inflict electoral punishment on their parties, offering the latter an electoral advantage over their right-wing rivals. Relying on the largest cross-national data set to date on the evolution of close to 100 parties’ popularity ratings in 21 democracies, time-series–cross-section results confirm this electoral advantage. Somewhat paradoxically, while center-right government parties systematically lose popularity in years of fiscal adjustment, no such regularity is found for left-leaning incumbents.

Keywords

fiscal adjustmentelectoral politicspopularityexit and voiceausterity
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , May 2018 , pp. 291 - 322
Copyright
© European Consortium for Political Research 2017 

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