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Economic Outcomes and Political Support for British Governments among Occupational Classes: A Dynamic Analysis

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  • Hibbs, Douglas A.

Abstract

The first section of the article establishes the political salience of macroeconomic issues to the British electorate, reviews the distributional consequences of macroeconomic outcomes, and suggests that unemployment outcomes in particular have strong class-related distributional effects. The second part presents a dynamic model of how rational voters evaluate the governing party, based on the idea that voters evaluate the cumulative performance of the governing party relative to the prior performance of the current opposition. Since the present relevance of prior outcomes decays over time, voters weight current performance more heavily than past performance informing contemporaneous political judgments. The empirical analyses in the third section include measures of nominal economic performance (inflation and exchange rate movements) and real economic performance (unemployment and real income fluctuations). The regression results indicate that the responses of political support among the occupational classes to macroeconomic changes are sizeable, and that the cross-class variations are consistent with the distributional consequences reviewed at the beginning of the article. The concluding section develops the electoral implications of the empirical results and presents a novel interpretation of trends in class-related political support for the parties. The evidence shows that the argument that there has been a persistent decline of class-based political alignments in Britain is erroneous.

Suggested Citation

  • Hibbs, Douglas A., 1982. "Economic Outcomes and Political Support for British Governments among Occupational Classes: A Dynamic Analysis," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 76(2), pages 259-279, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:cup:apsrev:v:76:y:1982:i:02:p:259-279_18
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    Cited by:

    1. D'Amato, Alessio & Mancinelli, Susanna & Zoli, Mariangela, 2016. "Complementarity vs substitutability in waste management behaviors," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 84-94.
    2. Thomas Sattler & Stefanie Walter, 2010. "Monetary Credibility Vs. Voter Approval: Political Institutions And Exchange‐Rate Stabilization During Crises," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 22(3), pages 392-418, November.
    3. Gebhard Kirchgässner, 2016. "Voting and Popularity," CESifo Working Paper Series 6182, CESifo.
    4. van der Ploeg, F., 1989. "Two essays on political economy," Other publications TiSEM 4256c7b5-8422-47b0-be5b-a, Tilburg University, School of Economics and Management.
    5. Arthur Schram & Frans Winden, 1989. "Revealed preferences for public goods: Applying a model of voter behavior," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 60(3), pages 259-282, March.
    6. repec:gig:joupla:v:1:y:2009:i:3:p:33-56 is not listed on IDEAS
    7. Van Der Ploeg, F., 1989. "Tow Essays On Political Economy," Papers 8909, Tilburg - Center for Economic Research.
    8. Veysel Avsar & Cem Karayalcin & Mehmet Ali Ulubasoglu, 2013. "State-owned Enterprises, Inequality, and Political Ideology," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 25(3), pages 387-410, November.
    9. Cesar Alberto Campos Coelho, 2004. "Elections and Governments` Behaviour - An Application to Portuguese Municipalities," NIPE Working Papers 8/2004, NIPE - Universidade do Minho.
    10. Findley, T. Scott, 2015. "Hyperbolic memory discounting and the political business cycle," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 345-359.
    11. David L. Weakliem & Anthony F. Heath, 1994. "Rational Choice and Class Voting," Rationality and Society, , vol. 6(2), pages 243-270, April.
    12. Harold D. Clarke & Euel Elliott & Barry J. Seldon, 1994. "A Utility Function Analysis of Competing Models of Party Support," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 6(3), pages 289-305, July.

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