DemElect seminar: Does Material Hardship Affect Political Preferences?
| Dates: | 11 May 2016 |
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| Times: | 15:45 - 17:15 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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| Speaker: | Anja Neundorf |
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Anja Neundorf (University of Nottingham) asks if material hardship affect political preferences? And her answer: depends on the political context
Anja argues that preference updating happens at the intersection of contextual pull factors, such as elite discourse, and individual push factors, such as an individual’s economic conditions. One key implication is that individuals are more likely to translate personal hardship into higher support for left-wing redistributive social policies when political elites actively compete over these issues. Using data from 22 European countries, she shows that income is a better predictor of support for redistribution in countries where parties polarize over economic and redistributive issues. To unpack the causal relationship between preferences and elite behavior, she examines individual-level panel data from Great Britain, a country where elites have converged to the center on economic issues. She finds that changes in the discursive context help understand both when material interest matters and how much it affects economic policy preferences.
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2:07
Humanities Bridgeford Street
Manchester
