The electoral consequences of the financial and economic crisis in Europe

By Enrique Hernández, Hanspeter Kriesi. 2016

476 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The electoral consequences of the Great Recession are analysed in this article by combining insights from economic voting theories and the literature on party system change. Taking cues from these two theoretical perspectives, the impact of the Great Recession on the stability and change of Western, Central and Eastern European party systems is assessed. The article starts from the premise that, in order to fully assess the impact of the contemporary crisis, classic economic voting hypotheses focused on incumbent parties need to be combined with accounts of long-term party system change provided by realignment and dealignment theories. The empirical analysis draws on an original dataset of election results and economic and political indicators in 30 European democracies. The results indicate that during the Great Recession economic strain was associated with sizable losses for incumbent parties and an increasing destabilisation of Western European party systems, while its impact was significantly weaker in Central and Eastern European countries, where political rather than economic failures appeared to be more relevant. In line with the realignment perspective, the results also reveal that in Western Europe populist radical right, radical left and non-mainstream parties benefited the most from the economic hardship, while support for mainstream parties decreased further.

Subfields: Political Science and International Relations

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b1340a92fc31d6d417f1afb2f0f7bb30694c4159

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In Political Science and International Relations

1. Cengiz Erişen
2. Sergio Martini
3. Elias Papaioannou
4. S. Guriev
5. A. Cichocka
6. Yann Algan
7. Martin Halla

Citations in the corpus

• The European Trust Crisis and the Rise of Populism (2017, background): “Hernández and Kriesi (2016) report cross-country evidence of a link between the severity of the Great Depression and the electoral losses of incumbent parties.”
• Populism as Identity Politics (2018, background): “Although it was initially thought that poor economic conditions might be responsible for the recent rise of populism (Hernandez & Kriesi, 2015; Sides & Tesler, 2016), evidence for the role of economic hardship is mixed.”
• The Breakdown of the Spanish Two-Party System: The Upsurge of Podemos and Ciudadanos in the 2015 General Election (2016, background): “We expect the economy to play a relevant role in this election, as in the previous contest (Fraile & Lewis-Beck 2014) and in other countries also affected by the financial crisis (Bosco & Verney 2012; Hernández & Kriesi 2016; Magalhães 2014).”
• Psychological Correlates of Populist Attitudes (2021, background): “Last, since populist attitudes are expected to depend on grievances and perceived economic vulnerability (Hernández & Kriesi, 2016; Kriesi & Pappas, 2015; Rico & Anduiza, 2019; Rodrik, 2018), we add a dummy variable scoring 1 if the respondent is unemployed (either actively looking or not actively…”