Benjamin Radcliff

The Welfare State, Turnout, and the Economy: A Comparative Analysis.

While the economic voting literature is voluminous, comparatively little attention has been paid to the question of how—or whether—the economy affects turnout. I address this issue by examining national elections in 29 countries. Using time series data, the initial findings are replicated by a case study of American presidential and midterm elections since 1896. It is argued that the effect of economic adversity depends upon the degree of welfare state development. This relationship is argued to be nonlinear, so that mobilization occurs at either extreme while withdrawal obtains in the middle range. The importance to democratic theory, the study of elections, and the politics of welfare policy are discussed.

The Political Economy of Competitive Elections in the Developing World

Theory: Theories of economic voting are applied to competitive elections in the developing world. Hypotheses: The effect of the macroeconomy on electoral support for incumbent parties is mitigated by the impact of the economy on turnout and the relative sensitivity of voters to recession and growth. Method: Pooled time series data on aggregate electoral data for eight developing countries are analyzed using least squares with dummy variables (LSDV). Results: Economic decline imposes enormous electoral costs on governments, but economic growth provides no electoral benefits.

Economic Voting and the Welfare State: A Cross-National Analysis

We examine the question of economic voting in the major industrial democracies. Using pooled time series data for 17 nations from 1960 to 1987, we argue that the magnitude and nature of the relationship between economic conditions and the vote depends upon the level of welfare state development. We find that (a) in countries with low to moderate levels of welfare spending, the economy has a more dramatic effect on the vote when things are good than when things are bad, and (b) the economy plays less of a role in states with high levels of spending, regardless of the direction of economic change. The implications for voting behavior, democratic accountability, and welfare policy are discussed.

Turnout and the Democratic Vote

Although political folk wisdom has long suggested that high turnout works to the advantage of the Democratic Party, this hypothesis has not fared well when subjected to empirical testing. The author finds strong and unequivocal evidence in support of the conventional view that greater turnout does profit Democratic candidates. This effect appears to have become more pronounced since 1960. The magnitude of the relationship is found to be considerable, such that even modest changes in turnout would have been sufficient to reverse the outcomes of recent presidential elections. The implications for party strategies and the study of voting are discussed.

Labor Organization and Public Policy in the American States

While the effort within the state politics literature to isolate the political determinants of public policy represents one of the most successful research programs in political science, researchers have in the main failed to consider the special role of labor organization in a capitalistic democracy Using cross-sectional and time-series data on a number of policy indicators, we demonstrate that the relative strength of the labor movement across the American states is one of the principal determinants of policy liberalism The implications for public policy and the study of American politics are discussed.

Electoral Participation, Ideology, and Party Politics in Post-Communist Europe

The relationship between voter participation and party fortunes has received much attention in the voting behavior literature. Specifically, a number of studies on the advanced industrial democracies postulate that left-of-center parties benefit from higher turnout. This article extends that argument to a quite different context: the economically and politically volatile post-communist world. Using aggregate data from 15 post-communist countries between 1990 and 1999, we test the turnout-party vote linkage. We find that, indeed, increased turnout benefits left parties, particularly the successor communist parties, while adversely affecting conservative and nationalist parties.

Solving a Puzzle: Aggregate Analysis and Economic Voting Revisited

This paper proposes an alternative explanation for the lack of congruence between aggregate and individual level studies of economic voting through a reexamination and extension of the aggregate time series. While aggregate level studies find a strong relationship between the state of the economy and the congressional vote, individual level studies performed in the latter half of the postwar era find little or no relationship between personal economic conditions and vote choice. It is argued that this lack of congruence exists because the impact of short-term economic fluctuations on voting in congressional elections has decreased dramatically over time. Using aggregate data, the relationship between economic changes and voting patterns is found to be time dependent; economic conditions are no longer major determinants of House elections. An examination of Senate elections indicates that this trend is limited to the House, in that economic fluctuations continue to influence senatorial contests. This House-Senate difference, it is proposed, stems from the different electoral dynamics of the two chambers.

Reward Without Punishment: Economic Conditions and the Vote

It is often suggested that voter dissatisfaction is a more important determi nant of behavior than satisfaction. In the familiar terms of economic voting this negativity bias implies that voters are more likely to punish than reward incumbents for the status of the economy. However, economic conditions affect not only how people vote but whether they vote, such that during periods of poor economic performance much of the public resentment toward the in-party is absorbed by abstention (Rosenstone 1982). Thus, the impact of recession is muted by the reduced propensity of those suf fering its effects to actually vote Given this fact, it appears that the presi dents party is more consistently rewarded for its economic successes than it is punished for its failures.

Turnout and the Vote Revisited A Reply to Erikson

In his contribution to this volume, Erikson contends that the results of my previous research (Radcliff 1994) are an artifact arising from my failure to account for changes in electoral dynamics in the South. When excluding the southern states from the analysis, Erikson argues, there is no evidence that turnout affects the vote. I demonstrate that omitting the South actually has very little impact: The evidence continues to support strongly the proposition that higher turnout benefits the Democrats.

The Structure of Voter Preferences

Economic models of voting typically assume the transitivity of individual-level preferences. Other conditions, such as single-peakedness or dichotomization, are also sometimes postulated. Despite the ubiquity of these assumptions, there is a paucity of empirical tests using real-world elections with mass electorates. Using CPS data, I address these issues in the context of U.S. presidential elections from 1972 to 1984. It is maintained that (a) the traditional assumption of transitivity is empirically plausible, even with a large number of alternatives, and while preferences are (b) predominantly not dichotomous, they do (c) tend to be single-peaked along a traditional ideological dimension.