Voting to leave: economic insecurity and the Brexit vote

This chapter focuses on the political economy of the Brexit vote. It contributes to the debate on British Euroscepticism by examining the impact of economic insecurity. More specifically we explore the determinants of individual support for Brexit by focusing on several factors relating to economic insecurity that have all received significant attention in broader political economy debates including income, occupation, unemployment, poverty and the level and type of education. Our analysis pays particular attention to the labour market position of individuals and the labour market risks they face as we want to examine whether- and if so how- the risk of being unemployed, the risk of being in poverty and housing risk have influenced support for Brexit. We also investigate the impact of income level and source, of being in low skill occupations in areas where immigration has been particularly salient, and of having studied a higher education degree that is ‘protective’ (medicine or law)

Explaining perceptions of the unemployed in Europe

This article explores the determinants of the perceptions of the unemployed in 29 European countries along three dimensions: whether people see the unemployed as the ‘government’s responsibility’; whether they believe the unemployed do not ‘try hard to find a job’; and whether they think that the standard of living of the unemployed is ‘bad’. I derive a number of expectations from the political economy literature on policy preferences and test whether these expectations explain variation in the perceptions of the unemployed. Using logistic regression analysis, I find that labour market status and occupations influence individuals’ perceptions of the unemployed. For instance, the unemployed and workers in low skill occupations are most likely to think that the government is responsible for the standard of living of the unemployed. However, certain factors such as gender, occupations, education, and union membership affect distinct types of perceptions differently. The determinants of policy preferences help us make sense of perceptions of the unemployed but certain factors affect different types of perceptions in distinct ways

Debunking the myth that keeps coming back: excessive spending on labour market policies and benefit fraud in the UK

Tim Vlandas of Reading University shows why recent UK labour market reforms rest on false assumptions and will do little to cure unemploymen

Xenophobia Britannica? Anti-immigrant attitudes in the UK are among the strongest in Europe

Tim Vlandas had hoped the referendum would have been the end of the obsession with immigration. Brexit would allow the UK to ‘take back control’ of its immigration policy, thereby nullifying the need for politicians to talk about it on an almost daily basis. He argues, however, that in fact the reverse is happening. Having decided to leave the EU, the vote is increasingly interpreted as a call to end immigration almost entirely and, furthermore, it is discussed even more often and more negatively than before the referendum

From gerontocracy to gerontonomia: the politics of economic stagnation in ageing democracies

One in five people in the EU and nearly one in ten in the world are now aged 65 and over. This demographic transformation is one of the great successes of the twentieth century and has profoundly altered the composition of electorates in many democracies. This article explores whether and how this population ageing reshapes the relationship between democracy and capitalism. I argue that ageing changes the economic and policy priorities of a growing share of democracies’ electorates in ways that incentivise elected governments to prioritise certain social policies and economic outcomes, such as pensions and low inflation, at the expense of others, most notably greater social investments and pursuing economic growth. As a result, gerontocracies increasingly lead to what I call a ‘gerontonomia’ characterised by democratically sustained economic stagnation

Why Cameron is wrong on the ‘cost’ of migrants

Tim Vlandas of Reading University attacks David Cameron’s pre-election focus on the ‘cost’ of migrant

A pandemic ‘misery index’: ranking countries’ economic and health performance during Covid-19

How can we compare the impact of Covid-19 on different countries across the world? Tim Vlandas proposes a pandemic ‘misery index’ that incorporates data covering both the health and economic dimensions

Why far right party success is about alliances between voters with different immigration grievances, and not just about culture

Support for the far right is often explained with reference to a ‘cultural backlash’ against cosmopolitanism, globalisation and immigration. Drawing on a new study, Daphne Halikiopoulou and Tim Vlandas explain that while these cultural explanations have some merit, there has been a tendency to overlook the importance of economic concerns about immigration for the electoral success of far right parties

Conservative voters and those living in Conservative constituencies appear more likely to be vaccinated than Labour supporters

Does political partisanship affect the likelihood of an individual choosing to get vaccinated against Covid-19? Using data from constituencies across England, Margaryta Klymak and Tim Vlandas show that Conservative voters and those who live in Conservative constituencies are more likely to be vaccinated than Labour supporters

Does unemployment matter? Economic insecurity, labour market policies and the far-right vote in Europe

What is the impact of unemployment on far-right party support? This article develops a framework that links unemployment to far-right party support, while taking into account both the heterogeneity of the workforce and the role of labour market policies. More specifically we focus on unemployment as a driver of economic insecurity and examine its effect on outsider and insider labour market groups. We identify the extent to which two labour market policies -unemployment benefits and Employment Protection Legislation (EPL) - mediate the effect of unemployment on economic insecurity, thus limiting the impact of unemployment on far right party support. We carry out a large N analysis on a sample of 14 Western and 10 Eastern European countries between 1991 and 2013. We find that unemployment only leads to higher far-right support when benefits replacement rates are low. The results with regards to the mediating effect of EPL are more complex as EPL only mediates the impact of unemployment when we take into account the share of foreign - born population in the country