Employment Insecurity, Incumbent Partisanship, and Voting Behavior in Comparative Perspective

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (11) ◽  
pp. 1489-1523 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agnar Freyr Helgason ◽  
Vittorio Mérola

We argue that occupational unemployment rates, by informing perceptions of economic insecurity, serve as a salient and powerful heuristic for aggregate economic performance. Consequently, high and rising occupational unemployment leads to negative evaluations of the economy and reduces the probability of supporting the incumbent government. Simultaneously, however, such changes shift support toward left-wing parties. Thus, economic insecurity serves as a valence issue, but is also inherently a positional issue, due to the distributional consequences of welfare policies. This brings about a potential conflict as under left-wing incumbent governments the economically insecure are cross-pressured, which increases their likelihood of exiting the electoral arena completely. We test our hypotheses using a Bayesian hierarchical multinomial model, with individual-level data from 43 elections in 21 countries. We find support for the hypothesized effects of employment insecurity on voting behavior, with a follow-up analysis supporting the posited informational mechanism.

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
ERIK NEIMANNS

Abstract Research on the politics of social investment finds public opinion to be highly supportive of expansive reforms and expects this support to matter for the politics of expanding social investment. Expanding social investment, it is argued, should be particularly attractive to left-wing voters and parties because of the egalitarian potential of such policies. However, few studies have examined to what extent individual preferences concerning social investment really matter politically. In this paper, I address this research gap for the crucial policy field of childcare by examining how individual-level preferences for expanding childcare provision translate into voting behavior. Based on original survey data from eight European countries, I find that preferences to expand public childcare spending indeed translate into electoral support for the left. However, this link from preferences to votes turns out to be socially biased. Childcare preferences are much more decisive for voting the further up individuals are in the income distribution. This imperfect transmission from preferences to voting behavior implies that political parties could have incentives to target the benefits of childcare reforms to their more affluent voters. My findings help to explain why governments frequently fail to reduce social inequality of access to seemingly egalitarian childcare provision.


1987 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
JOHN R. HIBBING

This is an analysis of the effects of economic factors on voting behavior in the United Kingdom. Aggregate- and individual-level data are used. When the results are compared to findings generated by the United States case, some intriguing differences appear. To mention just two examples, unemployment and inflation seem to be much more important in the United Kingdom than in the United States, and changes in real per capita income are positively related to election results in the United States and negatively related in the United Kingdom. More generally, while the aggregate results are strong and the individual-level results weak in the United States, in the United Kingdom the situation is practically reversed.


2012 ◽  
Vol 32 (4) ◽  
pp. 208-215 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Stratton ◽  
D.L. Mowat ◽  
R. Wilkins ◽  
M. Tjepkema

Introduction To understand the lack of a gradient in mortality by neighbourhood income in a previous study, we used individual-level data from the 1991–2001 Canadian census mortality follow-up study to examine income-related disparities in life expectancy and probability of survival to age 75 years in the City of Toronto and Region of Peel. Methods We calculated period life tables for each sex and income adequacy quintile, overall and separately for immigrants and non-immigrants. Results For all cohort members of both sexes, including both immigrants and non-immigrants, there was a clear gradient across the income quintiles, with higher life expectancy in each successively richer quintile. However, the disparities by income were much greater when the analysis was restricted to non-immigrants. The lesser gradient for immigrants appeared to reflect the higher proportion of recent immigrants in the lower income quintiles. Conclusion These findings highlight the importance of using individual-level ascertainment of income whenever possible, and of including immigrant status and period of immigration in assessments of health outcomes, especially for areas with a high proportion of immigrants.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sanghoon Kim-Leffingwell

How does an authoritarian past shape voters’ left-right orientation? Recent studies investigate “anti-dictator bias” in political ideology, where citizens in a former right-wing (left-wing) dictatorship may display a leftist (rightist) bias in their ideological self-identification. In this paper, I provide evidence for a “pro-dictator bias” where citizens hold ideological positions corresponding to those of the dictator depending on their experiences during and after transition. In countries with negotiated transitions and stronger former ruling parties, these successors could continue mobilizing the popular base of the former dictatorship with inherited advantages from the past and by invoking nostalgia through consistent reference to previous authoritarian achievements. I test this hypothesis with variables measuring successor party strength and the type of regime transition by combining individual-level survey data and country-level data. The findings emphasize the role of post-transition features in shaping alternative legacies on voter attitudes in former authoritarian societies.


2019 ◽  
pp. 135406881989351
Author(s):  
Frederico Ferreira da Silva

Changes in electoral markets in the late 20th century have forced political parties to adapt. Having lost much support and facing growing disaffection, parties often resorted to organizational structure reforms as means to reengage with a debased electorate. This article explores the impact of two changes in party organization—democratization of leadership selection procedures and increasing leadership power—on the extent to which leaders have an effect on voting behavior. In doing so, it analyzes the understudied interconnection between the electoral and the party faces of the presidentialization of politics thesis. The results provide mixed evidence regarding the relationship between both dimensions of presidentialization: more leadership power boosts leader effects, but only non-divisive direct leadership elections favor leader effects. This is a comparative study on Western democracies, combining individual-level data from the Comparative of Study of Electoral Systems with contextual data from the Political Party Database Project.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kari I. Aaltonen ◽  
Tom Rosenström ◽  
Pekka Jylhä ◽  
Irina Holma ◽  
Mikael Holma ◽  
...  

Background: Preceding suicide attempts strongly predict future suicidal acts. However, whether attempting suicide per se increases the risk remains undetermined. We longitudinally investigated among patients with mood disorders whether after a suicide attempt future attempts occur during milder depressive states, indicating a possible lowered threshold for acting.Methods: We used 5-year follow-up data from 581 patients of the Jorvi Bipolar Study, Vantaa Depression Study, and Vantaa Primary Care Depression Study cohorts. Lifetime suicide attempts were investigated at baseline and during the follow-up. At follow-up interviews, life-chart data on the course of the mood disorder were generated and suicide attempts timed. By using individual-level data and multilevel modeling, we investigated at each incident attempt the association between the lifetime ordinal number of the attempt and the major depressive episode (MDE) status (full MDE, partial remission, or remission).Results: A total of 197 suicide attempts occurred among 90 patients, most during MDEs. When the dependencies between observations and individual liabilities were modeled, no association was found between the number of past suicide attempts at the time of each attempt and partial remissions. No association between adjusted inter-suicide attempt times and the number of past attempts emerged during follow-up. No indication for direct risk-increasing effects was found.Conclusion: Among mood disorder patients, repeated suicide attempts do not tend to occur during milder depressive states than in the preceding attempts. Previous suicide attempts may indicate underlying diathesis, future risk being principally set by the course of the disorder itself.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (4) ◽  
pp. 331-351
Author(s):  
Travis Scott Lowe

Existing research on perceived employment insecurity tends to focus on perceptions of job insecurity (a worker’s perception of how vulnerable their position is with their current employer). This study examines perceived labor market insecurity (a worker’s assessment of their job prospects in the broader labor market) alongside perceived job insecurity. The author uses individual-level General Social Survey and publicly available state-level data from 1977 to 2012 to determine and identify strategies of flexible accumulation (e.g., deindustrialization, deunionization, and financialization) that may be associated with these outcomes. The findings indicate that these strategies are associated with greater levels of perceived job insecurity but are not significant for perceived labor market insecurity, which is only positively associated with unemployment at the state level. The author also finds that individual-level factors such as income and part-time status have differing effects for each outcome. In a time characterized by higher levels of employer-employee detachment, these findings have important implications for the study of employment insecurity.


2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 923-936 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. Michael McGregor ◽  
Jack Lucas

AbstractThis research note examines the correlates of turnout in Canadian school board elections. Using individual-level data from the Canadian Municipal Election Study, we find that gender, education, left-wing ideology, Conservative partisanship and parental status were associated with participation in Calgary's 2017 public school board elections. Some of these patterns relate to the specific details of Calgary's 2017 election; others, we suggest, may be characteristic of school board elections more generally. We relate our findings to the literature on ballot roll-off and low-turnout elections.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valeria Pegoraro ◽  
Franca Heiman ◽  
Antonella Levante ◽  
Duccio Urbinati ◽  
Ilaria Peduto

Abstract BACKGROUND: Several studies have been focusing on the potential role of atmospheric pollutants in the diffusion and impact on health of Covid-19. This study’s objective was to estimate the association between ≤10 micrometers diameter particulate matter (PM10) exposure and the likelihood of experiencing pneumonia due to Covid-19 using individual-level data in Italy.METHODS: Information on Covid-19 patients was retrieved from the Italian IQVIA® Longitudinal Patient Database (LPD), a computerized network of general practitioners (GPs) including anonymous data on patients’ consultations and treatments. All patients with a Covid-19 diagnosis during March 18th, 2020 – June 30th, 2020 were included in the study. The date of first Covid-19 registration was the starting point of the 3-month follow-up (Index Date). Patients were classified based on Covid-19-related pneumonia registrations on the Index date and/or during follow-up presence/absence. Each patient was assigned individual exposure by calculating average PM10 during the 30-day period preceding the Index Date, and according to GP’s office province. A multiple generalized linear mixed model, mixed-effects logistic regression, was used to assess the association between PM10 exposure tertiles and the likelihood of experiencing pneumonia.RESULTS: Among 6,483 Covid-19 patients included, 1,079 (16.6%) had a diagnosis of pneumonia. Pneumonia patients were older, more frequently men, more health-impaired, and had a higher individual-level exposure to PM10 during the month preceding Covid-19 diagnosis. The mixed-effects model showed that patients whose PM10 exposure level fell in the second tertile had a 30% higher likelihood of having pneumonia than that of first tertile patients, and the risk for those who were in the third tertile was almost doubled.CONCLUSION: The consistent findings toward a positive association between PM10 levels and the likelihood of experiencing pneumonia due to Covid-19 make the implementation of new strategies to reduce air pollution more and more urgent.


2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (5) ◽  
pp. 651-686 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aida Just

This article examines how political regimes in migrants’ origin countries influence their party identification in adopted homeland. I posit that immigrants are more likely to acquire partisanship in their host country if they came from a nonparty autocracy as opposed to a party-based autocracy or democracy. Moreover, among partisans, immigrants are less likely to identify with a left-wing party if they came from a communist regime. Finally, these effects are particularly pronounced among foreign-born individuals from highly authoritarian regimes. The analyses using Geddes, Wright, and Frantz Autocratic Regimes data along with individual-level data from the European Social Survey (ESS) 2002-2017 in 19 established democracies confirm these expectations. These findings have important implications for debates on immigrant political integration, party politics, and the prospects of electoral stability in contemporary democracies.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document