Essays on elections, economic performance, and ideological contagion

The focus of this dissertation lies at the intersection of Public Economics, Political Economy and Political Science. In Chapter 1, we introduce the conceptual framework and the thematic connection across the rest of the three chapters. Armed with this basic understanding, we move to Chapter 2, where we investigate whether economic conditions affect electoral outcomes and whether incumbent governments exploit this relationship regarding election timing. Amidst mixed evidence in literature and identification challenges tied to the endogeneity of election timing and economic factors, we implement a systematic and novel approach by leveraging the European Parliament (EP) Elections and addressing the existing identification issues. By constructing a unique dataset that integrates economic and electoral datasets, we find that economic conditions significantly influence incumbent popularity. Based on these findings, we estimate a counterfactual vote share index for the governments that accounts for European-wide issues such as Euroscepticism. Isolating the exogenous variation in economic conditions and incumbents' vote share, our results find no opportunistic effect in election timing. On the contrary, governments manipulate economic conditions strategically to bolster their chances of re-election, especially for regularly timed elections. In brief, economic conditions do seem to affect government popularity, but incumbents seem to take less advantage of this linkage than expected, at least in European Union countries. These results contribute to our understanding of the strategic behavior of governments in relation to electoral cycles and economic policymaking. In Chapter 3, we shift our focus to political ideas and the way spread across regions. In particular, we shed light in the mechanisms and the metric of proximity that these spillovers occur. We investigate these questions in the context of negative attitudes towards the European Union (Euroscepticism). Euroscepticism is a good example for which to investigate the birth and propagation of political ideas. Attitudes towards the European Union have internal (and country specific) origins but are also influenced by attitudes in other countries. This influence can happen through social media, news, personal contacts, party-to-party linkages, or other channels. Euroscepticism is salient, and important enough to leave affect party platforms and impact electoral choices. We focus on three potential avenues of diffusion: between societies at the citizen level, between political parties at the elite level, and because of EP election results. To explore these questions, we have compiled a dataset of public opinion, party manifesto, and electoral results data from 1979 to 2019. We find that eurosceptic ideas spread among members of the public but primarily among countries with cultural and geographic proximity. Yet, these types of proximity don’t matter for the spread of eurosceptic ideas among parties. Instead, party family accounts significantly for party platform similarity. Lastly, EP elections have a surprising effect: eurosceptic results in one country are associated with more europhile reactions in other countries. Hence, paradoxically, the rise of eurosceptic parties in EP elections in one country leads to more euroenthusiasm elsewhere. Finally, in Chapter 4, we explore the evolving relationship between national and European Parliament (EP) elections in federally organized entities, particularly focusing on the European Union. We investigate two primary hypotheses: first, whether the size of the incumbency penalty in EP elections is larger than in national elections and whether it is decreasing over time; second, whether EP elections are transitioning from non-binding referenda on national party performance to more distinct electoral events related to European Union. Our study reveals that the incumbency effect, while initially larger for EP elections, diminishes over time. Preliminary results also confirm the secondary notion of EP elections, which becomes less pronounced over time.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Economics

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2024

Author dc:creator

• Velentzas, Theodoros

Contributors dc:contributor

• Deltas, George
• Krasa, Stefan
• Kourtikakis, Konstantinos
• Song, Lena

• Political Business Cycles
• Opportunistic Elections
• Ideological Contagion
• Secondary Elections

Statement dc:rights

• Copyright 2024 Theodoros Velentzas

Language dc:language

en, eng

Handle dc:identifier

https://hdl.handle.net/2142/125813

OAI record oai:identifier

https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/oai-pmh?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=etdms&identifier=oai%3Awww.ideals.illinois.edu%3A2142%2F125813