Regional export-dependence and business-related popular votes in export-led Switzerland

Jérémie Poltier

Review of International Political Economy, 2025, vol. 32, issue 3, 790-817

Abstract: In this article, I investigate the relationship between regional export-dependence and the outcomes of popular votes that are relevant to the interests of business actors, as they relate to the issue of international competitiveness. I establish a theoretical framework inspired by literatures on trade exposure and growth models. I show that in an export-led country such as Switzerland, voters from export-dependent regions, presumably particularly sensitive to the question of competitiveness, tend to vote in a way that matches the expressed preferences of organized business. I also explore how vote-level factors and region-level factors condition the main relationship of interest, and find that it is particularly strong in the context of votes on tax policy, as well as in regions where unemployment is consistently low. This article contributes to several literatures. It contributes to ongoing debates in the trade exposure literature between the proponents of the compensation hypothesis and those of an alternative hypothesis centered around competitiveness. It makes a key contribution to the growth model (GM) literature by highlighting the importance of the regional dimension of GMs for the politics of export-led growth. Furthermore, these contributions are also relevant to the economic voting literature and the field of international political economy (IPE) in general.

Date: 2025
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DOI: 10.1080/09692290.2024.2434057

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