Preferences for growth strategies in advanced democracies: A new ‘representation gap’?

Lucio Baccaro, Björn Bremer, Erik Neimanns

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

While research on the economic characteristics of growth models across countries is now extensive, research on their politics is in its infancy, even though governments routinely pursue different strategies to generate growth. In particular, we lack evidence on (1) whether citizens have coherent preferences towards growth strategies, (2) what growth strategies citizens prefer and (3) what shapes their preferences. We address these questions through a new survey of public opinion in Germany, Italy, Sweden and the United Kingdom, which exemplify different economic models. We find that preferences for growth strategies are consistent with other policy preferences and are meaningfully structured by class, retirement status, and to a lesser extent, sector of employment. At the same time, differences across class and sector are small, and a large majority of respondents across countries favour wage-led growth. This hints at a possible ‘representation gap’ since this growth strategy is in crisis everywhere.

Original languageEnglish
JournalEuropean Journal of Political Research
DOIs
StatePublished - 10 May 2024

Keywords

  • comparative capitalism
  • economic growth
  • growth models
  • macroeconomic policies
  • public opinion
  • unequal representation

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