Title

Linking Policies And Economic Voting: Explaining Reelection In The Case Of The Spanish Socialist Party

Abstract

Economic voting literature has shown that voters hold governments responsible for the state of the economy. Election studies have also found that voters punish governing parties that divert from their campaign promises and move their policy positions. These bodies of literature cannot convincingly explain the repeated reelection of the Socialist Party, which passed supply-side economic measures at odds with campaign promises and its traditional ideology. Furthermore, the party succeeded in gaining reelection regardless of the state of the economy and despite consistently high unemployment. In this article, it is argued that to better understand the repeated electoral success of the Socialist Party, three additional factors have to be taken into account: the party system, compensatory policies, and internal party politics. These factors allowed the Spanish Socialist Party to build an electoral support coalition based on lower classes, rural voters, and voters dependent on state-subsidized income.

Publication Date

1-1-2000

Publication Title

Comparative Political Studies

Volume

33

Issue

8

Number of Pages

1018-1048

Document Type

Article

Personal Identifier

scopus

DOI Link

https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414000033008002

Socpus ID

0034369088 (Scopus)

Source API URL

https://api.elsevier.com/content/abstract/scopus_id/0034369088

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