Does high unemployment mobilize the unemployed? Evidence using Swedish register data

Abstract

This article contributes to recent scholarship on the effects of economic hardship on political participation, and particularly on the issue of how individual and contextual effects interact. More specifically, we study whether the effect of individual unemployment on turnout depends on the level of aggregate unemployment. In contrast to most existing researchers on this topic, we argue that contextual unemployment may reinforce the negative effects of individual unemployment. We also contend that previous studies have not adequately considered how the composition of the unemployed population differs across times of high and low unemployment. Our empirical approach uses state-of-the-art Swedish register panel data, which gives us good opportunities to control for the selection of the unemployed population over the business cycle. We find that once this problem of dynamic selection is taken into account, the negative effect of individual unemployment on electoral turnout is actually stronger in high unemployment contexts.

Doubly disadvantaged: Unemployment, young age, and electoral participation in the United Kingdom

“…This result is robust across statistical approaches including contextual Fixed Effects and socio‐demographic controls, except for the Fixed Effects with Individual Slopes, and Event Study. This novel finding on the impact of unemployment in the British context aligns with previous panel data analyses in Germany (Emmenegger et al., 2017) and Sweden (Österman & Brännlund, 2023; Österman & Lindgren, 2021), and with cross‐sectional data for 26 European countries (Azzollini, 2021). The pattern that cumulative spells do not matter beyond the second supports the psychological mechanism of within‐person habituation (Rosenstone, 1982), suggesting the first experience disrupts the most (Laurence, 2015).…”

“…g ., Italy and Spain) present profound differences between young and prime age workers (Barbieri et al., 2019). There, higher youth unemployment may either mitigate or exacerbate the focal relationship (Azzollini, 2021; Österman & Lindgren, 2021), with the extent of moderation to be assessed by future research. Relatedly, future research may further explore how the mechanisms linking unemployment to turnout are affected by the life‐cycle, potentially with qualitative methods.…”

“…Given that unemployment scars often require compromising on job characteristics for re‐employment, such as on wages and hours (Arulampalam et al., 2001), job authority/status (Dieckhoff, 2011), and often different occupation sector (Brand, 2015), the resulting disorderly’ career trajectory (Wilensky, 1961) may even amplify the blurring of social position after re‐employment. In Sweden, Österman and Brännlund (2023) provide support for the role of the workplace: higher turnout among former workplace colleagues mitigates the negative impact of unemployment on electoral participation.…”

“…Scholars have linked labour market hardships to the challenges for social democracy (Bürgisser & Kurer, 2021; Lindvall & Rueda, 2014), the rise of Radical Right Parties (Emmenegger et al., 2015; Gidron & Hall, 2017; Norris & Inglehart, 2019; Rydgren, 2007), socio‐political trust (Bauer, 2018; Giustozzi & Gangl, 2021; Laurence, 2015; Mewes et al., 2021; Schraff, 2018), political preferences (Gelepithis & Jeannet, 2018; Marx & Picot, 2020; Wiertz & Rodon, 2021) and voting behaviour (Marx, 2016; Rovny & Rovny, 2017). Among these, scholars have focused on how labour market hardships shape political engagement and participation (Marx & Nguyen, 2016; Rovny & Rovny, 2017; Österman & Lindgren, 2021). The latter relationship is crucial: if those that are most socially vulnerable are also politically marginal, this could create a vicious circle, with potentially dire effects for contemporary democracies (Lijphart, 1997; Verba, 1996).…”

Are “bad” jobs bad for democracy? Precarious work and electoral participation in Europe

“…This, virtually by definition, increases the likelihood of gaps in employment. A recent stream of research highlights how unemployment experiences decrease political engagement and electoral participation (Emmenegger et al, 2017;Rovny and Rovny, 2017;Azzollini, 2021;Giustozzi and Gangl, 2021;Österman and Lindgren, 2021;Österman and Brännlund, 2023), with the key mechanisms being higher social stigma (Laurence, 2015), lower social trust (Mewes et al, 2021;Azzollini, 2023), and lower political efficacy (Emmenegger et al, 2015). Considering however unemployment together with precarious work, we get additional insights in terms of political socialization (or lack thereof).…”