Stability of Political Support for National Political Institutions and the European Union During the Great Recession: Evidence From a Six-Wave Panel From the Netherlands

Mass-public political support plays a key role in the survival of democratic political systems. This paper investigates how economic recession influences mass-public support for political systems. Specifically, it explores the level of over-time stability of political support in times of economic crisis. Existing literature tells us little about the stability of political support at the individual level of measurement. This paper fills this gap by using data from the LISS panel to explore the stability of political support for national political institutions and the European Union. The LISS panel is a representative six-wave panel survey collected in Netherlands. Initial results from this project show that political support is a fairly stable attitude that is only weakly influenced by perceptions of current economic situation. In sum, by utilizing a unique panel dataset, this paper provides a major contribution to our understanding of resilience of democratic regimes in times of economic crises.