The role of economic uncertainty in the rise of EU populism

Economic interests are assumed to be the leading driver of political preferences, and various empirical studies have examined how economic conditions affect political views and voting behavior. Meanwhile, populism is on the rise in European Union (EU) member countries. Against that backdrop, this pa...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Public choice 2022-01, Vol.190 (1-2), p.229-246
Main Author: Gozgor, Giray
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Attitudes
Bias
Causality
Dummy
Economic conditions
Economic policy
Economics
Economics and Finance
Left wing politics
Political Science
Populism
Public Finance
Right wing politics
Uncertainty
Voter behavior
Voting
Voting rights
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Economic interests are assumed to be the leading driver of political preferences, and various empirical studies have examined how economic conditions affect political views and voting behavior. Meanwhile, populism is on the rise in European Union (EU) member countries. Against that backdrop, this paper aims to examine the effect of economic uncertainty on populist voting behavior based on a panel dataset of 24 EU countries from 1980 to 2020. We focus on whether total populist, right-wing populist, and left-wing populist votes are affected by a new indicator of economic uncertainty, namely, the World Uncertainty Index (WUI). Relying on a fixed-effects, bias-corrected least squares dummy variable estimator and instrumental variable estimations, we show that a higher WUI increases total populism and right-wing populist voting behavior. The baseline results remain consistent when dealing with potential issues of endogeneity and reverse causality, addressing omitted variable bias, and excluding outliers.
ISSN:0048-5829
1573-7101
DOI:10.1007/s11127-021-00933-7