CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2012
| Author | Krohn, Torgeir |
|---|---|
| Title | Economy and Election in Norway 1981-2009 |
| Summary | This paper discusses the perceived and actual macroeconomic impact on Norwegian voters. Using data from the Norwegian Election Study from the eight latest parliamentary elections, the paper tests the theory of economic voting on the Norwegian electorate during the course of three decades. Unlike many other studies in the field, this is just as much a study of the parties’ economic profile as it is the assessment of the voter’s attitudes and behavior. By using a consistent OLS-model for each election, the paper refutes the reward-punishment mechanism of economic voting. The voter’s negative bias can be termed negative grievance asymmetric voting where the punishment mechanism is more dominant than the reward response. This negative bias is related to the fact that the Norwegian voters are not attributing the parties in government for the economic success in the last twenty years. The Norwegian incumbent parties have a problem of attribution and a lack of credibility, since they cannot convince the voters that the prosperous economic record is a result of their virtue. An alternative explanation to the economic voting approach is that the economy’s role in developed democracies can be understood as contested issue ownership between the parties. The different Norwegian parties strive to be perceived as competent economic managers in issues like taxation policy, oil revenue management and especially employment policies. The overall macroeconomic picture seems to explain very little, but the voters are policy specific and sensitive in some areas of economic policy-making when they judge the incumbent government’s performance. A general argument from this thesis is that how the economy is perceived seems to be more important than the actual macroeconomic picture per se. |
| Supervisor | Duman, Anil |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2012/krohn_torgeir.pdf |
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