The Rise and Fall of Social Democracy, 1918-2017

Nicola Mastrorocco, Simon Hix () and Giacomo Benedetto ()
Additional contact information
Simon Hix: London School of Economics
Giacomo Benedetto: Royal Holloway London

Economic Papers from Trinity College Dublin, Economics Department

Abstract: We describe the electoral history of one of Europe's most successful party families over the past 100 years in 31 countries. With a unique and newly collected dataset of national election results, and a large number of economic and social variables measured for each country-election observation, we find that two main factors drive the electoral performance of social democratic parties: public sector spending, and the size of the manufacturing sector. We investigate these results further with an analysis of individual-level voting behaviour, using the European Social Surveys from 2002 to 2016. Together, our findings suggest that most of the fall in support for social democratic parties in recent years is correlated with a decline in the number of industrial workers as well as a reduction in the propensity of social democratic parties' core supporters (industrial workers and public sector employees) to vote for them.

Keywords: Social Democracy; Elections; Political economy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H72 K42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 50 pages
Date: 2019-12, Revised 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm, nep-his, nep-law and nep-pol
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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Related works:
Journal Article: The Rise and Fall of Social Democracy, 1918–2017 (2020)
Working Paper: Rise and Fall of Social Democracy, 1918-2017 (2019)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tcd:tcduee:tep0520

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