Economic Policy and Public Opinion in Spain

Bibliographic Data

ID6231650
AuthorsPeter Mcdonough, Samuel H Barne, Samuel H Barnes, Antonio López Pina
Year1986
Volume30
Issue2
Pages446
Publication date1986-05-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueAmerican Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/2111104
OpenAlexW2334048763
LanguageEN
Citations received21
References cited23

The socialist party has come to power in Spain just as socialist orthodoxy has fallen out of fashion, at a time of widespread unemployment, and in the wake of memories of prosperity during the last years of Francoism. Drawing on data from a national sample, we examine the preferences of Spaniards with regard to economic policy and the effects of these preferences on support for the government. Economic opinions are relatively uncrystallized, although it is possible to discern a progressive-conservative split. An equally important feature of public opinion is the high level of expectations surrounding government responsibility for economic affairs. These characteristics reflect the disjuncture between economic ideology and actual practice during past decades as well as an older legacy of statist values. Despite the inchoate nature of attitudes on certain economic issues, and because of the high level of expectations regarding economic policy, perceptions of collective economic conditions-that is, sociotropic considerationstend to have a greater impact than traditional cleavages, such as religion, on support for the government

Development economics · Economic growth · Economic power · Economics · Government (linguistics · Ideology · Orthodoxy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Prosperity · Public opinion · Public policy · Unemployment · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Fiscal Policies and Political Economy · History · Law · Social Policy and Reform Studies

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