CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2013
| Author | Galindo Alfonso, Jorge |
|---|---|
| Title | Outsiders, Elections and Equilibriums. Dualization in the Labor Market as a Cause of Electoral Volatility |
| Summary | Why do crises affect to the stability of some party systems more than others? Three main answers have been proposed: cleavage variation; change in the institutions/rules of the electoral game; external shocks that affect the voters’ evaluation of parties’ performance. But these perspectives use a definition of volatility (Pedersen 1980, 399) that does not capture the key aspects of the phenomenon. To avoid this I depart from a concept of the party system as an oligopolistic equilibrium between voters, dominant parties (inside the equilibrium) and smaller parties (outside the equilibrium). An economic shock affects the party system stability through the labor market structure. The shock increases the number of outsiders (workers with low employment protection, unemployed) and makes their situation more precarious, pushing them to punish the dominant parties. I use a OLS regression as well as a first difference approach to show that when a shock is in place, a higher number of outsiders will generate more electoral volatility outside the equilibrium. However, an increase in temporary workers in a country does not provoke higher volatility. I explain how temporary workers have evolved in a particular way during this crisis that is different from other outsiders. Finally I apply a micro-level test to show that a worker with the category of outsider in the labor market has more probability to vote to a party different from the core than an 'insider'. |
| Supervisor | Kemmerling, Achim |
| Department | Public Policy MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2013/galindo_jorge.pdf |
Visit the CEU Library.
© 2007-2021, Central European University