Dynamics of protest and electoral politics in the Great Recession

Abstract

This article links the consequences of the Great Recession on protest and electoral politics. It innovates by combining the literature on economic voting with social movement research and by presenting the first integrated, large-scale empirical analysis of protest mobilisation and electoral outcomes in Europe. The economic voting literature offers important insights on how and under what conditions economic crises play out in the short-run. However, it tends to ignore the closely connected dynamics of opposition in the two arenas and the role of protests in politicising economic grievances. More specifically, it is argued that economic protests act as a 'signalling mechanism' by attributing blame to decision makers and by highlighting the political dimension of deteriorating economic conditions. Ultimately, massive protest mobilisation should, thus, amplify the impact of economic hardship on the electoral losses of incumbents and mainstream parties more generally. The empirical analysis to study this relationship relies on an original semi-automated protest event dataset combined with an updated dataset of electoral outcomes in 30 European countries from 2000 to 2015. The results indicate that the dynamics of economic protests and electoral punishment are closely related and point to a destabilisation of European party systems during the Great Recession.

Voter Responses to Fiscal Austerity

“…This hypothesis is in line with findings that governments in fact associate substantial risk with fiscal austerity (Hallerberg, 2004;Hübscher, 2016;Hübscher and Sattler, 2017) and with the e↵ect of austerity on public protest dynamics during the Euro crisis (Magalhaes, 2014;Genovese, Schneider and Wassmann, 2016;Hutter, Kriesi and Vidal, 2018;Bremer, Hutter and Kriesi, 2020).…”

The Effect of Austerity Packages on Government Popularity During the Great Recession

“…This expansion of conflict from the institutitional to the protest arena has the potential to increase policy salience as it involves actors who conventionally stand on the sidelines of policy disputes. Put differently, protest has an important 'signaling function' (Bremer, Hutter and Kriesi 2020), which increases the political costs of controversial policies. We therefore expect that the impact of austerity policies on vote intentions depends on the politicizing strategies of the public (our politicization hypothesis).…”

Till austerity do us part? A survey experiment on support for the euro in Italy

“…Although elites and media were successfully able to sell austerity to voters in some countries like the United Kingdom (Barnes and Hicks, 2018) or Denmark (Bisgaard and Slothuus, 2018), most evidence suggests that voters in the crisis-ridden southern European countries oppose austerity policies (Fernández-Albertos and Kuo, 2016, 2020; Franchino and Segatti, 2019; Hübscher et al., 2020). The experience of the crisis and austerity did not only contribute to a large amount of electoral volatility and protests (Alonso and Ruiz-Rufino, 2020; Bremer et al., 2020), but it also weakened support for the euro (Hobolt and Wratil, 2015) and influenced the result of the 2015 Greek referendum on the bailout package (Jurado et al., 2020; Xezonakis and Hartmann, 2020). Given that utilitarian considerations remain strong predictors of public support for European integration (Foster and Frieden, 2021), we expect that individuals presented with a scenario that requires Italy to implement austerity due to EU conditionality would increase their support for euro exit.…”

“…One of the problems with this crisis resolution mechanism is that the austerity measures imposed on crisis countries are highly unpopular (Fernández-Albertos and Kuo, 2016, 2020; Franchino and Segatti, 2019; Jurado et al., 2020) and lead to electoral volatility, public protests, and the emergence of anti-system forces (Bojar et al., 2021; Bremer et al., 2020; Hübscher et al., 2020). Still, existing research shows that voters in most crisis-ridden countries strongly support the euro and are unwilling to leave it despite the costs associated with austerity (Clements et al., 2014; Hobolt and Wratil, 2015; Roth et al., 2016).…”