Beyond the 2008 Great Recession: Economic factors and electoral support for the radical left in Europe



Gomez Martinez, R ORCID: 0000-0002-6810-0628 and Ramiro, L
(2019) Beyond the 2008 Great Recession: Economic factors and electoral support for the radical left in Europe. Party Politics, 25 (3). pp. 358-368.

[img] Text
Gomez Ramiro Economic factors and electoral support for the radical left in Europe Accepted Version.pdf - Author Accepted Manuscript

Download (548kB)

Abstract

One of the most striking political developments occurring during the Great Recession has been the growth of the radical left in some European countries. Though the literature is far from conclusive, it has generally been argued that the economy is not a main reason driving people’s support for non-mainstream parties (particularly the Greens and the radical right). In this article, we contend that this is not the case for radical left parties, which despite pursuing other agendas do still compete very strongly on economic issues. Using individual-level data for 56 elections taking place between 1996 and 2016 in 15 European countries we find a positive effect of unemployment on support for radical left parties, and only very weak evidence that this effect depends on voters’ ideology or whether the mainstream left (Social Democrats) is in office. We conclude that unemployment enables the radical left to increase its support regardless of the political context, but does not significantly change by itself the ideological makeup of its electorate.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: economic crisis, electoral behaviour, Europe, political parties, radical left
Depositing User: Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited: 13 Jun 2017 09:19
Last Modified: 19 Jan 2023 07:03
DOI: 10.1177/1354068817718949
Related URLs:
URI: https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3007960