Taming Economic Voting: Does Social Security Moderate Punishment or Reward?

Does a favorable perception of the social security system help the incumbent to survive voters’ punishment for economic downturns? The question is particularly relevant to Turkey, where the predominant party system persisted for the past 17 years despite economic fluctuations. The incumbent Justice and Development Party (AKP) has reformed its social security system by introducing universal health insurance and expanding social assistance. The literature indicates that social security mediates economic voting. There is macro-level evidence that incumbent votes in countries with generous social security are less affected by a change in the national economy (economic voting) than in countries with poor social security. Earlier studies produced mixed findingsbut the more recent research that took into account comprehensive measures of social security and the clarity of responsibility shows that advanced social security suppresses economic voting. At the micro-level, previous studies show that employment insecurity increases individual tendencies for economic voting especially under the right-wing government These findings suggest that individuals who benefit from social security are less likely to blame or praise the government for the economy than those who do not. Neither the macro- nor micro- level studies examined, however, whether social security benefits moderate voters’ punishment (when the economy is bad) more than their reward behavior (when the economy is good). Past research on economic voting has tested the grievance asymmetry hypothesis (i.e., voters punish the incumbent more strongly than they reward it for the economy) using the economic voting model. Although the results are mixed, this hypothesis is based on the empirical theory of valence asymmetry, the tendency for negative events/objects/situations to have stronger effects on individual attitudes than positive ones. The grievance hypothesis must be taken into account when estimating the impact of social security perception on economic voting. Using the post-election survey data in 2018 in Turkey, we investigate how voters’ perceptions of social security and national economic conditions interactively predict long-term incumbent support. The (binary) dependent variable is whether or not the respondent voted for the AKP in both of the last two legislative elections. The results show, first, that high security perception is associated with long-term incumbent support. Second, change in the probability of incumbent support is larger when the economy is bad than when it is good, a finding that supports the grievance asymmetry hypothesis. Third, the moderating effect of social security perception on economic voting is stronger when economic perception is good than when it is bad. In other words, even after controlling for grievance asymmetry, social security perception still suppresses the reward behavior more strongly than the punishment behavior. In conclusion, social security perception reinforces the grievance asymmetry tendency in economic voting rather than mitigating it.