What drives government popularity? For decades, scholars, journalists, and political pundits alike have converged on a single answer: the economy. A rising economy lifts the popularity of the government, and if the economy's fortunes turn south, so too does that of the government. This conventional wisdom informs politicians' decisions as well as the scholarly commentary on parties and elections. Yet the conditions that underlie this model have changed in many countries as globalization has shifted control away from national policymakers, as non-economic cultural issues have risen in importance, and as our politics have become more polarized. At the same time, since the Great Recession in 2008 persistent economic volatility has kept the economy on the agenda. What, then, fuels government popularity in our current volatile environment? Are political fortunes tied to economic stability, as in the past? Or has the economy-popularity link-the popularity function-been severed by a host of new and less predictable factors in post-industrial societies?
To answer these questions, Economics and Politics Revisited uses data from the Executive Approval Project (EAP), a cross-nationally comparable data on leader popularity, to model the fundamental dynamics of government support in advanced industrial democracies. Eleven country-specific chapters, each written by experts in the politics of the country, examine the role of economic performance in generating leader support in each country. In all cases, chapter authors show that the economy matters for popularity. However, the economy-popularity link is stronger in some countries than others. Further, chapters leverage EAP series to highlight change over time. Pooled analyses extend these findings, highlighting how the public's responses to the economy are reduced when political campaigns shift to non-economic issues and when parties are polarization on non-economic issues. Collectively, the volume highlights how evolving issue agendas are changing the nature of political accountability in advanced industrialized democracies. While the economy remains important, the book calls on students of political accountability to give greater attention to the role of non-economic issues.
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Timothy Hellwig is Professor of Political Science and Academic Director of the Europe Gateway, Indiana University, and a member of the Executive Approval Project. He is co-author of Democracy Under Siege? Parties, Voters, and Elections after the Great Recession. (2020) and author of Globalization and Mass Politics: Retaining the Room to Maneuver (2014). His research appears in the American Journal of Political Science, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and other journals and edited volumes.
Matthew Singer is the Alan R. Bennett Honors Professor of political science at the University of Connecticut, where he has taught since 2007, and he is a member of the Executive Approval Project. He is the co-editor of The Latin American Voter: Pursuing Representation and Accountability in Challenging Contexts (2015) and the author of numerous journal articles in Comparative Political Studies, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of Politics, and other journals and edited volumes. His 2018 Comparative Political Studies article was awarded the Seligson Prize for the best paper using data from the Latin American Public Opinion Project.
Luís Aguiar-Conraria is a Full Professor at the School of Economics and Management, University of Minho.
John Bartle is Professor of Government at the University of Essex. He has research interests in voting behaviour, public opinion, the policy mood, British political parties, and the British judiciary.
Éric Bélanger is Professor at the Department of Political Science, McGill University.
Paolo Belluci is Professor at the Department of Social, Political and Cognitive Sciences, University of Siena.
Ryan E Carlin is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for Human Rights and Democracy at Georgia State University.
Sebastian Dellepiane is a Senior Lecturer in Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde. He investigates and teaches in the area of political economy.
Kathleen Donovan is a Professor of Political Science at St. John Fisher University.
Bruno Fernandes is an expert in Economics, Business, and Politics, based at the University of Bordeaux, France
Emiliano Grossman is Associate Professor of Politics at Sciences Po, working at the Centre d'études européennes. He was co-director of LIEPP's "Evaluation of Democracy" Research Group until 2023.
His research focuses on comparative political institutions and agenda-setting processes. Currently he is working on the "cycles of attention" in politics and partisan strategies in a political context that increasingly constrains the autonomy of governments. He is also interested in the effects of media visibility on these processes. In addition, he coordinates the project "political agendas of France", financed over several years by the National Research Agency (ANR), which aims to develop quantitative indicators of the evolution of political institutions in France.
He is in charge of the "Politics and Public Policy" stream at the Sciences Po School of Public Affairs (EAP). He teaches comparative politics in Paris and Introduction to Political Science at the Reims campus.
Isabelle Guinaudeau is a Political Scientist and CNRS Research Fellow at Sciences Po. Her research is at the juncture of comparative politics, electoral studies and public policy analysis.
Jonathan Hartlyn is Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has been a member of several international election observation teams invited to the Dominican Republic, including those led by former president Jimmy Carter in 1990 and 1996.
Airo Hino is Professor at the Faculty of Political Science and Economics, Waseda University.
Olivier Jacques is Assistant Professor in the Department of Management, Evaluation and Health Policies at the School of Public Health of the University of Montreal.
Mark A Kayser is Professor of Applied Quantitative Methods and Comparative Politics at the Hertie School, Berlin.
Paul M Kellstedt is Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University.
Ellen M Key is Professor of Political Science, Appalachian State University
Panos Koliastasis is Adjunct Assistant Professor of Politics at the University of Peloponnese.
Matthew J Lebo is Professor of Political Science, University of Western Ontario.
Arndt Leininger is a political scientists at Chemnitz University of Technology working on comparative politics, political sociology, electoral studies and direct democracy.
Michael S Lewis-Beck is an American political scientist and the F Wendell Miller Distinguished Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa. His research focuses on comparative politics, political forecasting, and political methodology.
Gregory J Love is Professor of Political Science at the University of Mississippi.
Pedro C Magalhães is a Senior Researcher at the University of Lisbon, studying public opinion and judicial politics, with an emphasis on attitudes towards democracy, procedural fairness in governance, political behaviour, and survey methodology.
Cecilia Martínez-Gallardo is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Anthony McGann is Professor of Government and Public Policy at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow.
Vincenzo Memoli is an Associate Professor in Political Science at the Department of Political and Social Science of the Università degli Studi di Catania.
Hanako Ohmura is Professor of Political Science at Kwansei Gakuin University.
Lluís Orriols is Associate Professor at the University Carlos III of Madrid. His research areas are public opinion, political and electoral behaviour.
Martin Paldam is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Economics and Management at Aarhus University.
Brandon B Park is an Assistant Professor specializing in Comparative Politics within the Department of Political Science and International Relations at Soongsil University.
Pedro Riera is a Researcher at the European University Institute, Florence. He works on comparative politics, electoral systems and political behaviour. He is the author of 'Non bis in idem: voto escindido en sistemas electorales mixtos. Los casos de Nueva Zelanda en 1999 y 2002' (Revista Española de Ciencia Política, 2009).
Xavier Romero-Vidal is a political scientist studying the evolution of public opinion and political behaviour from a comparative perspective. He works as a postdoctoral fellow at the University Carlos III Madrid.
Henrik Bech Seeberg is a Professor in Political Science at Aarhus University in Denmark.
Mary Stegmaier is Associate Professor and Vice Provost for International Programs, University of Missouri.
John Yfantopoulos is Professor of Health Economics at the University of Athens, and ex President of the Board for Public Health in Greece.
