The tenure gap in electoral participation: instrumental motivation or selection bias? Comparing homeowners and tenants across four housing regimes

Abstract

Integrating housing tenure in Instrumental Motivation Theory predicts a tenure gap in electoral participation, as homeowners would be more motivated to vote compared with tenants. The empirical question is whether this effect is causal or rather due to selection into different housing tenures. This question is tackled using coarsened exact matching (CEM) on data for 19 countries, allowing us to better control for endogeneity. Even then, homeowners are found to vote more often than tenants. This association is stronger in countries characterized by a strong pro-homeownership ideology and/or where the financialization of housing markets turned houses into assets.

An asymmetric partisanship effect: House price fluctuations and party positions

“…; André et al. ). On the local level, homeowners are found to participate more often in local politics (DiPasquale & Glaeser ; Dietz & Haurin ).…”

“…Homeowners turn out disproportionately more often as do higher‐income voters in general (André et al. ; Pontusson & Rueda ; Mahler ). In other words, the marginal electoral benefit of addressing homeowners’ preferences – for example, by lower degrees of redistribution – is rather low when house prices are rising (with possibly lower costs of abstention from this group).…”

Long-term developments in housing policy and research

“…Given the historical lack of comparative housing indicators and the focus in housing research on in-depth case studies, empirical applications of the housing regimes concept are more recently compared with the army of scholars that have engaged with Esping-Andersen's welfare regime typology. Though the limitations are similar, housing regimes help to make sense of cross-national variations pertaining to outcomes, such as young adults' transition to homeownership (Lersch & Dewilde, 2015); housing and financial wealth accumulation (Wind et al, 2017;Wind & Dewilde, 2019); housing conditions (Mandic & Cirman, 2012;Borg, 2015;Soaita & Dewilde, 2019); and welfare attitudes and political behaviour (Ansell, 2014;André & Dewilde, 2016;André et al, 2017). Though social surveys remain threadbare when it comes to housing indicators, socio-economic surveys such as European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EUROSTAT) and the Household Finance and Consumption Survey (European Central Bank) are popular data sources informing comparative micro-level research.…”

Gewinner und Verlierer von Stadtentwicklung: Ein Plädoyer für mehr Wohneigentum

“…Zumal sich Programme, die Bestandsmieter vor exzessiven Mieterhöhungen schützen und Programme, die den Erwerb von Wohneigentum fördern, nicht ausschließen. Somit bleibt als politökonomischer Erklärungsansatz für das Paradoxon linker Wohnungsmarktpolitik noch, dass eine Reihe jüngerer Studien zeigen, dass Immobilieneigentümer mit größerer Wahrscheinlichkeit an Wahlen teilnehmen (André et al 2017), und dann für konservative Parteien stimmen (Ansell 2014).…”