Why Austerity? The Mass Politics of a Contested Policy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 3333855 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Kirk Bansak (0000-0003-0229-9694, University of California, corresponding author), Michael M Bechtel (0000-0002-6080-5367, Washington University in St. Louis, corresponding author), Yotam Margalit (0000-0002-9589-8487, Tel Aviv University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 115 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 486-505 |
| Publication date | 2021-05-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Political Science Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-0554 • E-ISSN: 1537-5943 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0003055420001136 |
| OpenAlex | W3134242233 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 50 |
| References cited | 45 |
The effects of austerity in response to financial crises are widely contested and assumed to cause significant electoral backlash. Nonetheless, governments routinely adopt austerity when confronting economic downturns and swelling deficits. We explore this puzzle by distinguishing public acceptance of austerity as a general approach and support for specific austerity packages. Using original survey data from five European countries, we show that austerity is in fact the preferred response among most voters. We develop potential explanations for this surprising preference and demonstrate the empirical limitations of accounts centered on economic interests or an intuitive framing advantage. Instead, we show that the preference for austerity is highly sensitive to its political backers and precise composition of spending cuts and tax hikes. Using a novel approach to estimate support for historical austerity programs, we contend that governments' strategic crafting of policy packages is a key factor underlying the support for austerity
Austerity · Backlash · Economics · Framing (construction · Geography · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Social Policy and Reform Studies
Austerity from the Left
Winning Elections with Unpopular Policies
Causal Machine Learning for Moderation Effects
Are citizens willing to reduce public debt? Beliefs, information and policy preferences
Financial markets and mass political attitudes
What Makes a Citizen? Contemporary Immigration and the Boundaries of Citizenry
The Limits of Public Support for Fiscal Consolidation
Testing public reaction to constitutional fiscal rules violations
Understanding public attitudes during Covid-19 in France with Polanyi and Gramsci
The power of folk ideas in economic policy and the central bank–commercial bank analogy
Culture & European attitudes on public debt
Guns versus butter’ in public opinion
Ethnic politics and sovereign credit risk
Crude credit
The electoral consequences of taxation in OECD countries
Crisis management
Fiscal equalization in Nordic municipalities
Taxing your cake and growing it too
Strategies and consequences of local fiscal consolidation
Optimal lockdowns
The system is broken
Public Budget Cuts
Interdependent Preferences for Financing and Providing Public Goods—The Case of National Defense
Lower taxes at all costs? Evidence from a survey experiment in four European countries
How does fiscal austerity affect trust in the European Union? Analyzing the role of responsibility attribution
Selective European Solidarity
Globalization, Political Institutions, and Redistribution in Central and Eastern Europe
Fiscal policy preferences
Voter Responsiveness to Signals of Local Government Financial Health
Economic Shocks and Fiscal Policy Preferences
Using Conjoint Experiments to Analyze Election Outcomes
The electoral consequences of welfare state changes
The distributive politics of the green transition
Government Choices of Debt Instruments
The Effect of International Actors on Public Support for Government Spending Decisions
Forging support
The electoral risks of austerity
Age and support for public debt reduction
Do citizens care about government debt? Evidence from survey experiments on budgetary priorities
Deficit or Austerity Bias? The Changing Nature of Canadians’ Opinion of Fiscal Policies
Geographies of discontent
Austerity, economic vulnerability, and populism
Information, Uncertainty, and Public Support for Brinkmanship During the 2023 Debt Limit Negotiations
Threats and the Public Constraint on Military Spending
Does Austerity Cause Polarization
Austerity and Social Spending
Ideology, Information, and Social Welfare Preferences
When partisanship and technocratic credibility collide
Three worlds of austerity
Anti-austerity riots in late developing states
Stochastic gradient boosting
Political and economic determinants of budget deficits in the industrial democracies
Mass support for global climate agreements depends on institutional design
The Political Economy of Fiscal Adjustments
Conjoint Survey Experiments
Validating vignette and conjoint survey experiments against real-world behavior
Austerity
Explaining the salience of anti-elitism and reducing political corruption for political parties in Europe with the 2014 Chapel Hill Expert Survey data
Do voters punish the government for welfare state retrenchment? A comparative study of electoral costs associated with social policy
Emotions and Political Unrest
Systematically Biased Beliefs about Economics
The electoral consequences of austerity
The Eurotower Strikes Back
Voter Responses to Fiscal Austerity
The Structure of American Income Tax Policy Preferences
How Large Are the Political Costs of Fiscal Austerity
Left-Right Ideology and the Debate over International Bailouts
Reforms and Redistribution
Who Toes the Party Line? Cues, Values, and Individual Differences
Measuring Subgroup Preferences in Conjoint Experiments
Using Eye-Tracking to Understand Decision-Making in Conjoint Experiments
Measuring Voters’ Multidimensional Policy Preferences with Conjoint Analysis
International Negotiations in the Shadow of National Elections
Iceland on the Rocks
Public Inflation Aversion and the Political Economy of Macroeconomic Policymaking
Why Don't Trade Preferences Reflect Economic Self-Interest
Fiscal consolidation under electoral risk
The Politics of Trade-Offs
IMF Conditionality, Government Partisanship, and the Progress of Economic Reforms
When Are Monetary Policy Preferences Egocentric? Evidence from American Surveys and an Experiment
How Markets Shape Values and Political Preferences
Making Austerity Popular
Did Austerity Cause Brexit
Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy
Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias
| Unique citing works | 50 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 12,5 |
| Citation span | 2022 - 2026 (5) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 50 |