Preferences for International Redistribution: The Divide over the Eurozone Bailouts

Abstract

Why do voters agree to bear the costs of bailing out other countries? Despite the prominence of public opinion in the ongoingT he global financial system is in the midst of its most severe crisis in the postwar era, with countries such as Greece, Portugal, Ireland, and Spain facing possible sovereign defaults.1 To prevent such defaults and a subsequent economic collapse, other eurozone countries have been asked to contribute massive sums to a financial bailout fund. Although most experts view such bailouts as necessary for averting catastrophe, many voters fiercely oppose a large transfer of their tax contributions to prop up other countries' public finances. Indeed, recent snap polls in Germany and France reveal a sharply divided public, with only about one-in-three voters willing to support the bailout program.2 How should we understand the public divide over providing assistance to the region's struggling economies? What explains the We draw upon three strands of literature to develop a set of theoretical explanations for the public divide over the bailouts. The first account centers on the distributive effects of the bailouts, the second on voters' social dispositions, and the third on the role of partisanship and political knowledge. We then test a set of predictions stemming from each of these three accounts using novel data from two large-scale surveys that we conducted in Germany, the country shouldering the largest share of the EU's bailout program. The surveys, carried out in early 2012, included a broad range of detailed items pertaining

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