The Economy and the Vote: Economic Conditions and Elections in Fifteen Countries - Softcover

Brug, Wouter Van Der; EijK, Cees Van Der; Franklin, Mark

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0521682339 ISBN 13: 9780521682336

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2007

Synopsis

This book estimates the effects of economic conditions on the behavior of individual voters and on the outcomes of 42 elections in 15 countries. The conventional wisdom that poor economic conditions hurt governing parties is too simplistic. It does not hold for junior parties in coalition governments, who frequently gain at the expense of larger parties. It also does not hold in countries where responsibility for economic policy is unclear (more often than not). The extent to which the economy affects election outcomes depends strongly on the degree of electoral competition between parties.

About this title

Book Description

This book estimates the effects of economic conditions on the behavior of individual voters and on the outcomes of 42 elections in 15 countries. The conventional wisdom that poor economic conditions hurt governing parties is too simplistic. It does not hold for junior parties in coalition governments, who often gain votes from larger coalition partners.

About the Author

Wouter van der Brug is associate professor in methods for the social sciences at the Amsterdam School for Communications Research, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands. His work has been published in Comparative Political Studies, the British Journal of Political Science, the European Journal of Political Research, Electoral Studies, Party Politics, the Journal of Theoretical Politics, West European Politics, and Acta Politica. He recently co-authored European Elections and Domestic Politics (with Cees van der Eijk, 2007).

Cees van der Eijk is professor of social science research methods at the University of Nottingham. He taught at the University of Amsterdam from 1971 to 2004, was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1976-7, and was a Visiting Scholar at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in 1988-9. He is the author or co-author of fifteen books, including European Elections and Domestic Politics (with Wouter van der Brug, 2007), Citizen Participation in European Politics (with Hans Agné and others, 2000), In Search of Structure (with Meindert Fennema and Huib Schijf, 1998) and Choosing Europe? (with Mark Franklin and others, 1996), and of many articles and chapters in refereed journals and books.

Mark Franklin is the Stein Rokkan Professor of Comparative Politics at the European University Institute in Florence while on leave from Trinity College, Connecticut, where he has been teaching since 1998. He has also taught at the universities of Chicago, Iowa, and Houston in the USA and at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow. He has published eleven books, including Voter Turnout and the Dynamics of Electoral Competition in Established Democracies since 1945 (Cambridge, 2004), Choosing Europe? (with Cees van der Eijk and others, 1996), and Electoral Change (with Tom Mackie, Henry Valen, and others, Cambridge, 1992). He founded the Public Opinion and Participation Section of the European Union Studies Association, has been a director of the European Election Studies project since 1987, and has served on the editorial boards of six journals.

About this edition

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0521682339
• ISBN 13: 9780521682336
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 246