Preferences for redistribution in times of crisis: the role of fairness considerations and personal economic circumstances
- Autores: Jordi Garcia Muniesa
- Directores de la Tesis: Eva Anduiza Perea (dir. tes.), Jordi Muñoz Mendoza (codir. tes.)
- Lectura: En la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona ( España ) en 2019
- Idioma: español
- Tribunal Calificador de la Tesis: José Antonio Noguera Ferrer (presid.), Pilar Sorribas Navarro (secret.), José Fernández Albertos (voc.)
- Programa de doctorado: Programa de Doctorado en Ciencia Política, Políticas Públicas y Relaciones Internacionales / Politics, Policies and International Relations por la Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona
- Calificación: Sobresaliente
- Materias:
- Enlaces
- Tesis en acceso abierto en: TESEO
- Resumen
The aim of this thesis is to contribute to the understanding of how public preferences for redistribution can be affected by contexts of economic crisis. The analysis is focussed on two different mechanisms by which crises can influence redistributive preferences: changes in personal economic circumstances and the activation of crisis-specific fairness considerations.
The first empirical chapter of the thesis is focussed on the impact of personal experiences with the crisis on individuals’ preferences for a very specific redistributive policy: progressive taxation. I use original data from a survey conducted in nine European countries in the aftermath of the Great Recession. The results show that European citizens’ redistributive preferences correlated with their personal experience with the crisis. Those who reported higher retrospective relative deprivation tended to show higher support for progressive taxation. Nevertheless, results also show that the aggregate association was moderate. Partly because the effects of changes in personal economic circumstances were not homogeneous. Among those who were hit by the crisis, only right-leaning citizens and those who were pessimistic about their personal economic prospects showed increased support for tax progressivity.
In the second and third empirical chapters of the thesis I analyse how fairness considerations relative to who and why suffered the negative economic consequences of crisis influence citizens’ redistributive preferences. Firstly, using an economically incentivised laboratory experiment I show that fairness considerations based on whether individuals suffered an income-loss due to factors under or beyond the individual control influence individuals’ support for redistribution. With this experiment I also show that fairness considerations continue to matter when self-interest and insurance motives are primed. The lab experiment allows me to test the mechanism in a context with high internal validity.
To test whether crisis-specific fairness considerations can influence public’s support for redistribution in a more realistic and contextually rich setting I relied on a vignette-based survey experiment. The treatments made direct references to the economic crisis and its consequences. Through this experiment I analyse whether frames attributing the causes of being affected by the crisis to factors under or beyond individual control affected people’s support for redistribution towards crisis losers in the aftermath of the Great Recession. Interestingly, the results show that frames attributing being affected by the crisis to factors beyond individual control did not significantly increase support for redistribution. Contrarily, frames attributing the crisis impact to one of the factors under the individual control (past speculative behaviour) did reduce support for redistribution.
Overall, the thesis shows that a context of economic crisis can influence citizens’ preferences for redistribution. However, we should not expect recessions to have automatic and homogeneous effects on citizens’ redistributive preferences. On one hand, I show that personal experiences with the crisis can affect the levels of support for redistribution, but the effect is conditional to individuals’ ideological standings and economic expectations. Additionally, I have shown that not only personal material circumstances can influence people’s redistributive preferences. Their interpretation of the crisis and its effects can also influence their support for redistribution. This opens the door for political influence of political elites through framing practices.
