Resistance Against Austerity: How Policy Composition and Party Colour Influence Elections and Protests

This paper links the consequences of fiscal austerity on electoral and protest politics. It combines the literature on electoral politics with social movement research and by presenting an integrated, large-scale empirical analysis of protest mobilisation and electoral outcomes in Europe. A large literature claims that austerity policies are surprisingly popular and have little electoral costs. However, it tends to ignore the closely connected dynamics in electoral and protest arenas and the role of protests in politicising economic issues. This paper argues that the joint consideration of these two arenas provides new insights into the political consequences of austerity policies. The empirical analysis to study political consequenes of austerity relies on an original semi-automated protest event dataset combined with electoral outcomes and detailed taxation and expenditure data in 30 European countries from 2000 to 2015. Contrary to previous research, the results of this paper show that citizens are not fiscally conservatives and they resist austerity and punish the government, either at polls or in the street or both, depending on the specific composition of austerity packages and the party colour.