Mass Politics in Tough Times: Opinions, Votes, and Protest in the Great Recession

401 Pages·2014·2.34 MB·English

by  Nancy Bermeo

Mass Politics in Tough Times
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Mass Politics in
Tough Times
Opinions, Votes, and Protest in the
Great Recession
z

Edited by
NANCY   BERMEO
and
LARRY M. BARTELS
1
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3
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Mass Politics in Tough Times : Opinions, Votes and Protest in the Great Recession /
edited by Nancy Bermeo and Larry M. Bartels.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–935750–5 (hardback)—ISBN 978–0–19–935751–2 (paperback)
1. Political participation—United States—History—21st century. 2. Political
participation—Europe—History—21st century. 3. Global Financial Crisis, 2008–2009.
I. Bermeo, Nancy Gina, 1951– II. Bartels, Larry M., 1956–
JK1764.M375 2014
323’.042—dc23
2013028226

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
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Contents

About the Contributors vii
1. Mass Politics in Tough Times 1
Nancy   Bermeo and Larry M. Bartels
2. Crisis of Confi dence? Th e Dynamics of Economic Opinions
During the Great Recession 40
Christopher J. Anderson and Jason D.   Hecht
3. Political Understanding of Economic Crises: Th e Shape of
Resentment Toward Public Employees 72
Katherine J.   Cramer
4. Economic Crisis and Support for Redistribution in the
United Kingdom 105
Stuart   Soroka and Christopher Wlezien
5. Economic Insecurity and Public Support for the Euro: Before and
During the Financial Crisis 1 28
Sara B.   Hobolt and Patrick Leblond
6. Attitudes Toward Immigration in Good Times and Bad 148
Rafaela Dancygier and Michael Donnelly
7. Ideology and Retrospection in Electoral Responses to the
Great Recession 185
Larry M. Bartels
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vi Contents
8. C risis Perceptions and Economic Voting Among the Rich
and the Poor: Th e United Kingdom and Germany 224
Raymond M.   Duch and Iñaki Sagarzazu
9. Th e Electoral Impact of the Crisis on the French Working
Class: More to the Right? 266
Nonna   Mayer
10. Th e Political Consequences of the Economic Crisis in
Europe: Electoral Punishment and Popular Protest 297
Hanspeter   Kriesi
11. An End to “Patience”? Th e Great Recession and Economic
Protest in Eastern Europe 334
Mark R. Beissinger and Gwendolyn   Sasse
Index 371

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About the Contributors

Christopher J. Anderson is Professor of Government at Cornell
University. His research focuses on inequality and legitimacy in the
European Union and the OECD countries. He has written on such issues
as the popularity of governments, the legitimacy of political institutions,
and the link between welfare states and citizen behavior.
Larry M. Bartels holds the May Werthan Shayne Chair of Public Policy
and Social Science at Vanderbilt University. He has written extensively
on public opinion, electoral politics, and American democracy, includ-
ing Unequal Democracy: Th e Political Economy of the New Gilded Age and
Presidential Primaries and the Dynamics of Public Choice .
Mark R. Beissinger is the Henry W.  Putnam Professor of Politics
at Princeton University and Director of the Princeton Institute for
International and Regional Studies (PIIRS). His main fi elds of research
have been protest movements, nationalism, and revolutions, with special
reference to the former Soviet Union and the postcommunist states.
Nancy Bermeo is the Nuffi eld Professor of Comparative Politics at Oxford
University. She writes on regime change, institutional design, and the
eff ects of systemic shocks on political behavior and institutions. Her
publications include Ordinary People in Extraordinary Times: Th e Role of
the Citizenry in the Breakdown of Democracy and, most recently, C oping
with Crisis: Government Reactions to the Great Recession (ed. with Jonas
Pontusson).
Katherine J. Cramer is Professor of Political Science at the University
of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work focuses on public opinion, political
communication, civic engagement, and deliberative democracy. She is the
author of T alking About Race: Community Dialogues and the Politics of
Diff erence and T alking About Politics: Informal Groups and Social Identity
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viii About the Contributors
in American Life and coauthor of D emocracy at Risk: How Political Choices
Have Undermined Citizenship and What We Can Do About It .
Rafaela Dancygier is Assistant Professor in the Department of Politics
and the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University. Her broad
research interests are in comparative politics, with a focus on the impli-
cations of ethnic diversity in advanced democracies. Her work has
examined the domestic consequences of international immigration, the
political incorporation and electoral representation of immigrant-origin
minorities, and the determinants of ethnic confl ict. She is the author of
Immigration and Confl ict in Europe and has published in the American
Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, Comparative Politics,
World Politics, and edited volumes.
Michael Donnelly is a Max Weber Fellow at the European University
Institute. He received his Ph.D.  in Politics and Social Policy from
Princeton University in 2013. He studies comparative political behav-
ior, European politics, and quantitative methods, focusing on issues at
the intersection of group identities and political economy. He is cur-
rently working on a book manuscript titled "Identity and Interests: Voter
Heuristics and Support for Redistributive Policies." His research has
appeared in the J ournal of Politics .
Raymond M. Duch is an Offi cial Fellow at Nuffi eld College, Oxford
University, where he directs the Nuffi eld Centre for Experimental Social
Sciences (CESS). He is the coauthor of Th e Economic Vote: How Political
and Economic Institutions Condition Election Results , which demonstrates,
from analysis of more than three hundred public opinion surveys, how
citizens hold political parties accountable for economic outcomes. More
recently, Duch has turned to experiments in order to identify the infor-
mation shortcuts that individuals deploy for attributing responsibility for
collective decision making, such as those made in multiparty governing
coalition governments.
Jason D. Hecht is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Government at
Cornell University and was a Visiting Scholar in Politics at the University
of Oxford from 2012 to 2013. His dissertation explores how the onset of
recessions aff ects public concern for income inequality in Europe and
the United States. More broadly, his research investigates how economic,
political, and social contexts shape individuals' behavior and attitudes.
Sara B. Hobolt is Professor and Sutherland Chair in European Institutions
at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She has pre-
viously held posts at the University of Oxford and the University of
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About the Contributors ix
Michigan and has published extensively on public opinion, elections, and
European Union politics. Her book E urope in Question: Referendums on
European Integration (Oxford University Press, 2009) was awarded the
Best Book prize by the European Union Studies Association.
Hanspeter Kriesi currently holds the Stein Rokkan Chair in Comparative
Politics at the European University Institute in Florence. He previ-
ously taught at the universities of Amsterdam, Geneva, and Zurich. His
wide-ranging research interests include the study of direct democracy,
social movements, political parties, interest groups, public opinion, the
public sphere, and the media. He was the director of a Swiss national
research program, Challenges to Democracy in the 21st Century, from
2005 to 2012.
Patrick Leblond is Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Public
and International Aff airs at the University of Ottawa as well as Research
Associate at CIRANO (Montreal). He has published extensively on fi nan-
cial and monetary integration, banking regulation, international trade,
and business-government relations. Prior to moving to Ottawa, he taught
international business at HEC Montreal and worked in accounting and
business consulting.
Nonna Mayer is Research Director at the Centre National de la Recherche
Scientifi que of France and the Centre d’Études Européennes of Sciences Po,
Paris. Her fi elds of expertise are electoral sociology, racism, anti-Semitism,
and political participation. Her current research explores the electoral
impact of social precariousness in a context of crisis.
Iñaki Sagarzazu is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics at the University of
Glasgow. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Houston and was a
Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Nuffi eld College, Oxford University. His
research mainly focuses on how parties communicate with voters and how
voters perceive these messages. His work has been published in journals
such as the American Journal of Political Science, Latin American Politics
and Society, and E uropean Union Politics.
Gwendolyn Sasse is a Professorial Fellow in Politics at Nuffi eld College,
and University Reader in the Department of Politics and International
Relations and the School of Interdisciplinary Area Studies, Oxford
University. Her research interests include postcommunist transitions,
comparative democratization, ethnic confl ict, and the political behav-
ior of migrants. Her most recent book, Th e Crimea Question: Identity,
Transition, and Confl ict , won the Alexander Nove Prize awarded by the
British Association for Slavonic and East European Studies.
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