Who benefits from the retrospective vote? Bringing in new parties

Daniel Bochsler, Miriam Hänni

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract (may include machine translation)

Democracies across the world have experienced the rise of new political parties. The dominant view of the model of (retrospective) economic voting implicitly assumes that the main beneficiary of electoral change is the established opposition. However, the rise of new political parties affects how we think of retrospective (economic) voting. This article presents a more nuanced picture of electoral change and considers when electoral turnover benefits established opposition parties, and when new political parties. The theoretical model introduces different macro-economic and macro-political motives for electoral turnover. Using a novel dataset on electoral change, covering 59 democracies worldwide, it is found that high levels of corruption discredit the entire political establishment, and promote the rise of new parties. The effect of economic hardship is more nuanced. Low economic growth mainly benefits the established opposition because voters look for an established alternative within the political system. Rising unemployment, by contrast, promotes the rise of new parties.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)303-328
Number of pages26
JournalWest European Politics
Volume47
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 28 Nov 2023

Keywords

  • New parties
  • corruption
  • economic voting
  • electoral competition
  • retrospective voting

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Who benefits from the retrospective vote? Bringing in new parties'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this