Voting under debtor distress

IF 2.9 2区社会学 Q1 POLITICAL SCIENCE

Electoral Studies Pub Date : 2025-04-09 DOI:10.1016/j.electstud.2025.102929

Jakub Grossmann , Štěpán Jurajda

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

There is growing evidence on the role of economic conditions, including household debt levels, in the recent successes of populist and extremist parties. However, little is known about the role of over-indebtedness, even though debtor distress has grown in Europe following the financial crisis. We study the unique case of the Czech Republic, where by 2017 nearly one in ten citizens had been served at least one debtor distress warrant even though the country consistently features low unemployment. Our municipality-level difference-in-differences analysis asks about the voting consequences of a rise in debtor distress following a 2001 deregulation of consumer-debt collection. We find that debtor distress depresses turnout, and has a positive effect on support for (new) extreme-right and populist parties, which is offset by a negative effect on a (traditional) extreme-left party. The effects of debtor distress we uncover are robust to whether and how we control for economic hardship; the effects of debtor distress and of unemployment are of similar magnitude, but operate in opposing directions across the political spectrum.

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债务人困境下投票

越来越多的证据表明，经济状况（包括家庭债务水平）在民粹主义和极端主义政党最近的成功中发挥了作用。然而，人们对过度负债的作用知之甚少，尽管在金融危机之后，欧洲的债务人困境有所加剧。我们研究了捷克共和国的独特案例，到2017年，尽管该国失业率一直很低，但仍有近十分之一的公民至少收到了一份债务人困境认股权证。我们的市级差异分析询问了2001年消费者债务催收放松管制后债务人困境上升的投票后果。我们发现，债务人困境抑制了投票率，并对（新）极右和民粹主义政党的支持产生了积极影响，这被（传统）极左政党的负面影响所抵消。我们发现的债务人困境的影响与我们是否以及如何控制经济困难息息相关；债务人困境和失业的影响程度相似，但在整个政治领域的作用方向相反。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Electoral Studies POLITICAL SCIENCE-

CiteScore

3.40

自引率

13.00%

发文量

审稿时长

67 days

期刊介绍： Electoral Studies is an international journal covering all aspects of voting, the central act in the democratic process. Political scientists, economists, sociologists, game theorists, geographers, contemporary historians and lawyers have common, and overlapping, interests in what causes voters to act as they do, and the consequences. Electoral Studies provides a forum for these diverse approaches. It publishes fully refereed papers, both theoretical and empirical, on such topics as relationships between votes and seats, and between election outcomes and politicians reactions; historical, sociological, or geographical correlates of voting behaviour; rational choice analysis of political acts, and critiques of such analyses.