Year: 2014
Type: article
Study design: Observational Study
Abstract: To what extent do social policy preferences explain party choice? This question has received little attention over the past years, because the bulk of the literature has argued that electoral choice is increasingly shaped by identity‐based attitudes, rather than by preferences for economic‐distributive social policies. We argue that in the wake of this debate, the significance of social policy preferences for electoral choice has been underestimated, because most contributions neglect social policy debates that are specific to post‐industrial societies. In particular, they merely focus on income redistribution, while neglecting distributive conflicts around social investment. The Selects 2011 data allows investigating this crucial distinction for Switzerland. Our empirical analyses confirm that it is pivotal to take the pluridimensionality of distributive conflicts seriously: when looking at preferences for social investment rather than income redistribution, we find that social policy preferences are significant explanatory factors for the choice of the five major Swiss political parties.
Source: Swiss Political Science Review
DOI: 10.1111/spsr.12115
Authors: Flavia Fossati, Silja Häusermann
Institution: University of Zurich
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2018007490