IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/now/jlqjps/100.00018119.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Party Bans: Deterrence or Backlash? Evidence from the Basque Country

Author

Listed:
  • Andreu Arenas

Abstract

This paper investigates the electoral effects of party bans, studying the case of the ban on Batasuna, the political wing of ETA. In an initial electoral term, in 2003, Batasuna was banned from contesting local elections in all Basque municipalities; in a second term, in 2007, it was banned only in a subset of them, and in 2011 it became legal again. Exploiting the finite and heterogeneous length of the ban across municipalities, I find that a longer ban has a negative effect on electoral support for the targeted party. This effect is explained by the extent of the immediate loss in support in treated municipalities under the 2007 ban, observable in this instance because Batasuna called for a null vote. This pattern and further heterogeneous effects are consistent with voters learning from the new electoral scenario rather than with a direct cost attributable to the party no longer having institutional representation. This suggests that party bans may be used by incumbents to reduce their challengers' strength by triggering an electoral reshuffling, with voters learning about new parties and potentially switching allegiances.

Suggested Citation

  • Andreu Arenas, 2021. "Party Bans: Deterrence or Backlash? Evidence from the Basque Country," Quarterly Journal of Political Science, now publishers, vol. 16(3), pages 325-358, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00018119
    DOI: 10.1561/100.00018119
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1561/100.00018119
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1561/100.00018119?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Jésus Fernández-Villaverde & Carlos Sanz & Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, 2024. "Classical Right, New Right, and Voting Behavior: Evidence from a Quasi-Natural Experiment," CESifo Working Paper Series 11179, CESifo.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:now:jlqjps:100.00018119. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lucy Wiseman (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.nowpublishers.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.