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0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0 2004 2009 2014

year

economic vote

clarity

Predicted level of economic voting according to the institutional clarity of the country and the survey year. The economic vote is the difference in support for the prime minister’s party from a highly optimistic and a highly pessimistic voter based on predictions from Model 4D. Ideological cohesion and time in government are held at their means. Source: EES, ParlGov & PDY

to institutional clarity, since it was predicted that the importance of institutional clarity would be weaker during the recession than either before or afterwards.

4.5

The effect of clarity on other parties

The models discussed so far have focused on support for the current prime minister’s party. This approach has the advantage of simplicity but it also has the disadvantage that it disregards respondents’ levels of support for coalition partners and opposition parties, so it does not use all of the data available. This means that while it is possible to determine the degree to which prime ministers’ parties are supported relative to other parties in general15it is not possible to compare them to opposition parties specifically or to examine support for government parties more generally using this approach. A further model (Model 4E) has been constructed using the available data for every party so that the contrasting effects of economic voting between 15_{Since the dependent variable, party support, is centred around its individual-level mean, these models are} measuring support relative to the other key parties in each country rather than absolute support. This centring has both theoretical and data-driven motivations, which are discussed in detail in Chapter 2.

government and opposition parties in general can be examined in different clarity contexts. This model is based on Model 3D, which predicts party support based on, among other things, the individual’s prospective economic perceptions and whether the party is a government or opposition party. This was extended to take into account clarity of responsibility by allowing the key economic voting terms to interact with the clarity of responsibility predictors. In the base model, economic voting is measured by a three-way interaction between economic assessment, incumbency and time. This means that the model allows government and non- government parties to be affected differently by an individual’s economic assessment, which is the key claim of economic voting theory, and further allows the strength of this economic vote to change over time. Clarity of responsibility theory further asserts that the level of economic voting varies according to country-level clarity variables and if these effects are to be allowed to vary over time, this necessitates a four-way interaction.16 This is admittedly a high level of complexity but it reflects the complexity of the hypotheses.17 Without these interaction terms, it would not be possible to determine whether clarity of responsibility had a stable effect on economic voting propensity over time.

Once again, post-estimation simulation has been used to interpret this model. The method used to ascertain the effect of the clarity of responsible variables on economic voting is to com- pare the level of economic voting under different clarity scenarios in each year. In this instance, the level of economic voting is defined in terms of relative government support. Relative gov- ernment support is the difference between the individual’s support for a government party and that same individual’s support for an opposition party. This is positive if that individual gen- erally prefers government parties and negative if that individual generally prefers opposition parties. The economic voting level is the difference between the relative government support of a highly optimistic individual and that of a highly pessimistic individual. The higher the economic voting level, the more influence economic conditions have on the decision as to whether to support the government or the opposition. If this is zero then the economy plays no role at all. A negative economic voting level would be surprising as this would indicate that governments are harmed electorally by good economic conditions.

This model has been used to test the chapter’s hypotheses once again, as the different approaches offer different perspectives. The first hypothesis is that the economic vote is greater 16_{Ideological cohesion and institutional clarity are both allowed to interact with the three-way economic voting} interaction. Time in government is only meaningful for parties that are actually in government, so this variable only interacts with time and economic assessment. As always, the coefficient estimates are shown in Appendix B. 17_{Van der Brug, van der Eijk and Franklin (2007, 210–212), who use the same dependent variable, also use} four-way interactions in some of their economic voting models. Although their method of measuring the economic vote is quite different, this illustrates that this level of complexity inevitably arises when studying the economic vote through the lens of party support.

4.5. THE EFFECT OF CLARITY ON OTHER PARTIES 107 Figure 4.4: Government and opposition economic vote by time in office

0.8 1.0 1.2 2004 2009 2014

year

economic vote

time in office

Predicted level of economic voting in each survey year for a party that has been in government for ten years compared to a party that has just been elected to government. The economic vote is the difference in relative support for the party compared to an opposition party between a highly optimistic and a highly pessimistic voter based on predictions from Model 4E. Ideolo- gical cohesion and institutional clarity are held at their means. Source: EES, ParlGov & PDY

in countries where the government has been in power for a longer period of time. Figure 4.4 compares the predicted economic vote of a government that has been in power for ten years to one that has only just been elected. This figure shows that there is an economic voting effect favouring both short-term and long-term governments in all years. Surprisingly, governments that have only been in power for a short period appear to have been subject to slightly stronger economic voting than those that have been in power for a longer time in both 2004 and 2009. Neither of these differences is significant, however, the larger of the two being the 0.15 point (SE=0.16,p=0.35) difference in 2009. None of the three groups saw a significant difference in the economic vote between 2004 and 2009. By 2014, long-term governments were exposed to a greater level of economic voting than short-term governments (∆ = 0.35, SE = 0.18, p = 0.04). The increase in the economic vote experienced by long-term governments from 2009 to 2014 was 0.58 points (SE = 0.25, p = 0.02). None of the other differences over time were significant. Based on these results, it appears that time in office only played an important role in 2014. One possible explanation for this is that those parties who held power continuously since the Great Recession were seen differently by voters from parties that had

Figure 4.5: Government and opposition economic vote by ideological cohesion 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2004 2009 2014

year

economic vote

cohesion

Predicted level of economic voting according to the ideological cohesion of the incumbent government and the survey year. The economic vote is the difference in relative support for a governing party compared to an opposition party between a highly optimistic and a highly pessimistic voter based on predictions from Model 4E. Institutional clarity and time in gov- ernment are held at their means. Source: EES, ParlGov & PDY

been elected since that time. This would make sense as it means that parties who could be seen as responsible for the recession experienced a stronger economic vote.

Figure 4.5 contrasts the predicted economic vote of highly ideologically cohesive govern- ments with that of less cohesive governments. It can be seen that the economic vote exper- ienced by highly cohesive governments was stronger than that experienced by less cohesive governments. This difference amounts to 2.07 points (SE=0.59,p<0.001) in 2004, before falling by 1.86 points (SE=0.69, p< 0.01) before 2009, when the difference between the two groups almost vanishes (∆=0.21, SE=0.37, p=0.57). The difference between 2009 and 2014 is not significant (∆=0.74, SE=0.50, p=0.14) but the size of the gap between the two groups in 2014 is 0.95 points (SE= 0.33, p<0.01). An anomaly arising from this analysis is that the predicted economic vote for low cohesion governments in 2004 is actually negative (∆=₋0.36, SE=0.54,p=0.50) but this is not statistically significant. In summary, it appears that the ideological cohesion of the government does mediate its exposure to the economic vote but it also appears that this effect was weakened by the Great Recession. These

4.5. THE EFFECT OF CLARITY ON OTHER PARTIES 109 Figure 4.6: Government and opposition economic vote by institutional clarity

0.6 0.9 1.2 1.5 1.8 2004 2009 2014

year

economic vote

clarity

Predicted level of economic voting according to the institutional clarity of the country and the survey year. The economic vote is the difference in relative support for a governing party compared to an opposition party between a highly optimistic and a highly pessimistic voter based on predictions from Model 4E. Ideological cohesion and time in government are held at their means. Source: EES, ParlGov & PDY

findings support both the government clarity hypothesis and the hypothesis that this clarity effect was weaker during the recession than at other times.

Similarly, Figure 4.6 compares the predicted economic vote of governments in countries with high institutional clarity to that of governments in low-clarity countries. Unfortunately, owing to the uncertainty in the model estimates, there is little that can be confidently said about the effect of institutional clarity. The only year in which there is a statistically signi- ficant difference between the groups is in 2004, when low clarity countries experienced a 1.18 point (SE=0.53, p=0.03) stronger economic voting effect than high clarity countries. This runs opposite to the hypothesised effect, which was that high clarity countries should have a stronger economic vote. The point estimate of the effect was in the opposite direction in both 2009 (∆=0.43, SE=0.48,p=0.37) and 2014 (∆=0.61, SE=0.49,p=0.21) but neither of these estimates is significant. There was significant difference in effect size between 2004 and 2009 (∆=1.60, SE=0.72, p=0.03) but not between 2009 and 2014 (∆=1.78, SE=0.69, p=0.80). Given that the clarity effect is either not significant or significant but opposite to the expected sign, the conclusion has to be drawn that this model does not support

the institutional clarity hypothesis. Although there appear to be some significant time effects, in the absence of clear support for the basic hypothesis, it would be unwise to attempt to find support for the hypothesis that the effect varies overs time. In summary, institutional clarity does not appear to be a reliable predictor of economic voting, at least according to this model.

4.6

Conclusion

This chapter has examined the impact of clarity of responsibility as a mediator of the economic vote before, during and after the Great Recession. Clarity of responsibility was divided into three facets, each representing a distinct quality of a political context expected to affect the ease with which voters can hold the incumbent government responsible for the prevailing economic conditions. These facets were government clarity, institutional clarity and time in government. Government clarity refers to those characteristics of the incumbent government, such as consisting of a coalition of parties, that might make it difficult for voters to identify a party to hold to account. Institutional clarity refers to institutional characteristics having the same effect, such as the presence of a strong upper house or a federal system of government. These concepts were measured using the indices proposed by Hobolt, Tilley and Banducci (2013), except that it was found that the government clarity index was outperformed by one of its component measures, the ideological cohesion of the government, which was therefore used in its place as the measure of government clarity. Finally, time in government refers to the amount of time that a party has held office, since a party that has only recently been elected could plausibly claim not to have had an opportunity to influence the condition of the economy.

Three hypotheses were tested in this chapter, the first of these being that a longer period of time in government was associated with a stronger economic vote. This hypothesis was not supported by the data. When the effect was modelled as constant over time, there was no significant difference between parties that had been in power for a short period and those that had been in power longer. When the size of the effect was allowed to vary over time, a significant effect was only found in 2014. This was the case whether all parties were analysed together or the analysis was restricted to prime ministers’ parties, even though time in office was operationalised differently by the two approaches. This is certainly not strong enough evidence to claim that time in government is a mediator of the economic vote but it is inter- esting that there does appear to be some effect shortly after the Great Recession, since this

4.6. CONCLUSION 111 effectively means that time in government does matter when that time implies that the gov- ernment held office during the recession. In other words, this suggests that voters were more closely monitoring the economic performance of governments that survived the recession.

The second hypothesis is that greater clarity of responsibility is associated with a higher level of economic voting. There are two sub-hypotheses, in that this is expected to apply both to government clarity and institutional clarity. As mentioned earlier, government clarity is measured in this chapter by the ideological cohesion of the incumbent government. In each of the models, a positive relationship was found between government clarity and the level of economic voting. The same cannot be said for institutional clarity. No significant institutional clarity effect was found when the effect was assumed to be constant over time. Even when the effect was assumed to vary with time, no significant effect was found apart from in 2014 when considering only prime ministers’ parties. Even worse, when examining all parties to- gether, the effect was found to be in the opposite direction to that hypothesised in 2004 and otherwise not significant. In other words, the data offers strong support for the hypothesis with respect to government clarity but little if any support with respect to institutional clarity. This mirrors the findings of Hobolt, Tilley and Banducci (2013, 177), who first made this dis- tinction explicit and who also found that government clarity outperforms institutional clarity as a predictor of economic voting levels. The fact that some clarity effects were found using a contextual model of economic voting shows that existing clarity of responsibility findings cannot be completely explained away as an artefact of model misspecification. On the other hand, the lack of support for any clarity effect other than ideological cohesion supports the argument that model misspecification plays at least some role in the instability of economic voting results (van der Brug, van der Eijk and Franklin 2007, 16).

The final hypothesis is that clarity of responsibility was a weaker predictor of the economic vote during the recession that it was at other times. With respect to government clarity, this hypothesis has strong support. Whether all parties were analysed together or the analysis focused solely on the parties of the heads of government, the findings were the same. The level of economic voting was considerably higher in high cohesion countries than in low cohesion countries in both 2004 and 2014. In 2009, during the recession, this effect was not nearly as strong and, in fact, was not significantly different from zero, although the point estimates were still positive. In other words, the recession temporarily eroded the distinction between high- and low-clarity countries. In principle this hypothesis also applies to institutional clarity

but since institutional clarity was not shown to a predictor of the economic vote at all, this sub-hypothesis is not meaningful.

In summary, it was found that there was a clarity of responsibility effect, in that voters in countries with highly ideologically cohesive governments were more likely to vote economic- ally than those in countries with ideologically fragmented governments. It was further found that the level of economic voting was greater before and after the Great Recession than it was during its peak. Considered in conjunction with the finding from the previous chapter that the overall level of economic voting was reduced during the same period, this suggests that the event itself had the effect of clouding economic responsibility. This makes sense as the reces- sion was international in scale and had begun in the United States before spreading to Europe, so governments could plausibly deny responsibility for it. By 2014, however, governments had had plenty of time to react to the crisis and economic voting levels as well as the mediating effect of government clarity had returned to their pre-crisis levels. Any governments that had held power continuously since the crisis were held responsible to an even higher degree than before for the condition of the economy.

This chapter and the preceding chapter have looked at the circumstances under which poor economic conditions voters are likely to cause voters to abandon their support for their incumbent governments. This raises the question of which party or parties are likely to benefit from this shift in allegiances. The next chapter seeks to answer this question by examining whether some types of parties are more likely to receive the support of economic voters than others.

Chapter 5

Extreme and Eurosceptic parties: the changing

policy preferences of European voters

In the Greek parliamentary elections of 25 January 2015, Syriza won 149 of the 300 seats in the Hellenic Parliament. This allowed the radical left party to seize power from the grand coalition that had governed Greece since 2012 (Matakos and Xefteris 2016). The coalition parties, which included the centre-right New Democracy, the centre-left PASOK and at various times other parties, had desired to maintain Greece’s membership of the Eurozone, which meant imposing the austerity measures demanded by their creditors (Rori 2016). Syriza, on the other hand, stood on an anti-austerity platform.1 Much has been written about the situation in Greece but it raises interesting questions about how voters respond to economic crises. Why did Greek voters turn to Syriza specifically? Was it because they were leftist, or because they were Eurosceptic, or simply because they promised to end austerity? Was this event part of a greater Europe-wide trend?

This chapter explores these questions by examining which types of parties have benefited