Electoral rules and voting for protection: evidence from the trade wars

• In Event: New Approaches to the Political and Economic Consequences of Trade Exposure

Abstract

Does globalization shape support for electoral system reform? While some political economists have argued that international trade and electoral system choice are linked, most of the literature on support for electoral reform ignores trade as a relevant economic explanation and micro-level evidence remains scarce. In this paper, we address this gap and assess whether globalization and the backlash against it have become a relevant driver of support for electoral system reform in the twenty-first century. Leveraging two referendums with an opposite status quo electoral system held in the same year (New Zealand and the United Kingdom in 2011), we assess whether import exposure, job offshorability and automation threat predict people’s electoral system choice at the individual level. Our research design enables us to unbundle whether globalization affects support for electoral reform mainly through a status quo effect or it there is a similar linkage across fundamentally different status quo electoral systems.

Authors

• Michael Becher, IE UNIVERSIDAD

• Irene Menendez, IE University