Outsiders at the ballot box

Operationalizations and Political Consequences of the Insider-Outsider Dualism

Bibliographic Data

ID3127052
AuthorsAllison E Rovny (Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris), Jan Rovny (0000-0002-6071-4289, Centre d'études Européennes de Sciences Po)
Year2017
Pagesmww039
Publication date2017-01-10
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocio-Economic Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1475-1461 • E-ISSN: 1475-147X
PublisherOxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1093/ser/mww039
OpenAlexW2578383992
LanguageEN
Citations received66
References cited39

Recently, developed economies have witnessed an emerging dualism between the so-called labor market ‘insiders and outsiders’-two groups facing divergent levels of employment security and prospects. Those on the ‘inside’ occupy stable jobs, while those on the ‘outside’ confront increased levels of social and economic risks. There are, however, various prominent, but divergent, operationalizations of the insider-outsider phenomenon. While some scholars opt for indicators rooted in current labor market status of individuals, others prefer to consider occupational class groups as bases of the insider-outsider divide. As these operationalizations of outsiderness capture different profiles of outsiders, we test the extent to which they lead to consistent or inconsistent conclusions about electoral behavior. The article yields two consistent findings that are robust across all the operationalizations: that outsiders are less likely to vote for major right parties than are insiders, and that outsiders are more likely to abstain from voting. Additionally, we find that occupation-based outsiders tend to support radical right parties, while status-based outsiders rather opt for radical left parties-a finding supported by the association between social risk and authoritarian preferences. We test our expectations using multinomial logit models estimating vote choice on the first five waves of the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2010 across western Europe

Authoritarianism · Democracy · Dualism · Economics · Insider · Insider threat · Multinomial logistic regression · Political science · Politics · Positive economics · Sociology · Test (biology · Voting · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Law · Populism, Right-Wing Movements · Psychology · Social Policy and Reform Studies · Social Psychology

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