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The widespread second-order view on subnational elections leaves little room for the idea that subnational election campaigns matter for national-level electoral preferences. I challenge this perspective and explore the context-conditional role of subnational election campaigns for national-level vote intentions in multi-level systems. Campaigns direct citizens' attention to the political and economic "fundamentals" that determine their electoral preferences. Subnational election campaigns and the major campaign issues receive nation-wide media coverage. This induces all citizens in a country to evaluate parties at the national level even if they themselves are not eligible to vote in the upcoming subnational election. Thereby, subnational election campaigns may lead to a reduction in the uncertainty of voters' national-level electoral preferences throughout the country, which is reflected by a decrease in the volatility of national-level vote intentions. I explore weekly vote intention data from Germany (1992-2007) within a conditional volatility model. Subnational elections reduce uncertainty in nation-wide federal-level vote intentions for major parties. However, patterns of incumbency and coalitional shifts moderate this volatility-reducing effect. [Copyright Elsevier Ltd.]

This study examines the relationships between democratic politics and systematic investment (or capital) risk. Low risk is crucial to any well-functioning economy, as it encourages capital investment, facilitates growth, and enhances overall economic performance. This article distinguishes preelectoral, postelectoral, and institutional factors and examines how these influence systematic investment risk using daily stock market data from Germany. The results suggest that more (less) favorable and reliable investment conditions during the incumbency of right (left)-leaning governments lead to lower (higher) investment risk. This partisan effect is stronger the more inflation increases and depends on whether government is unified or divided. Investors also anticipate the effect of government partisanship: systematic risk decreases (increases) if the electoral prospects of a right (left)-leaning government enhance. Finally, grand coalition governments as well as periods of coalition formation trigger higher investment risk. ; ISSN:0022-3816 ; ISSN:1468-2508

Are elections & government partisanship important for stock market performance? This article offers a critical survey of the empirical literature on the impact of politics on stock markets. After a concise introduction of the two major politico-economic models, which have inspired research on the relationship between politics & stock markets, empirical findings on opportunistic business cycles & partisan effects are presented. In line with the rational expectation hypothesis, the evidence shows that often it is expected rather than current government partisanship which matters for stock market performance. Such anticipation of partisan effects can also be found for industrial sectors & individual firms. However, these effects vary considerably across sectors & firms. On a theoretical level, the article identifies reasons for why empirically standard models of political economy do not always travel well beyond the American case. The main reason is a disregard for important institutional characteristics of the political system to which they are applied. Finally, the survey summarizes main findings & proposes avenues for future research on the political economy of stock markets. Adapted from the source document.

"Wie wichtig sind Wahlen und die Parteizugehörigkeit von Regierungen für die Entwicklung des Aktienmarktes? Um diese Frage zu beantworten, liefert der vorliegende Beitrag eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme zur Wirkung von Politik auf Aktienmärkte. Nach einer kurzen Skizzierung jener beiden polit-ökonomischen Grundmodelle, die die Forschung zum Zusammenhang zwischen Politik und Aktienmarkt inspiriert haben, werden die Befunde empirischer Studien zu Wahlzyklus- und Parteieffekten vorgestellt und kritisch beleuchtet. Dabei wird insbesondere herausgearbeitet, warum die klassischen, vor dem Hintergrund des amerikanischen politischen Systems entwickelten polit-ökonomischen Modelle nicht ohne Weiteres auf andere Länder übertragbar sind und welche potenzielle Bedeutung institutionelle Charakteristika für den Einfluss von Politik auf Aktienmärkte haben. Der Aufsatz schließt mit einer Zusammenfassung und einigen Anmerkungen für weitere Forschungsanstrengungen." (Autorenreferat)

AbstractSocieties can address collective threats such as natural disasters or pandemics by investing in preparedness (ex ante) or by offering compensation after an adverse event has occurred (ex post). What explains which of these options voters prefer? We study how personal exposure and policy knowledge affect mass support for long-term disaster preparedness, a type of long-term investment meant to cope with an increasingly destructive and frequent class of events. We first assess whether support for preparedness reflects personal affectedness and find that neither subjective nor geo-coded measures of disaster exposure predict policy preferences. Second, we explore whether this finding can be explained by misperceptions about the features of the available policy options. We find that revealing the damage reductions associated with preparedness systematically reduces opposition to long-term investment. These results suggest that opposition to preparing for collective threats may depend more on informational deficiencies than on personal experience with realized risks.

AbstractWhich factors explain voters' evaluations of policy responses to economic shocks? We explore this question in the context of mass preferences over the distribution of disaster relief and evaluate three fairness-based explanations related to affectedness, need, and political ties. We analyze experimental data from an original survey conducted among American citizens and find that affectedness and need are key drivers of voters' preferred disaster responses. We then compare these patterns with observed disaster relief distributions (1993–2008). The results suggest that observed relief allocations largely mirror the structure of voter preferences with respect to affectedness and need, but not to political ties. These findings have implications for an ongoing debate over the electoral effects of natural disasters, voters' retrospective evaluations of incumbent performance, and the extent to which divide-the-dollar politics decisions align with mass preferences.

AbstractVoters tend to be richer, more conservative, and more educated than non-voters. While many electoral reforms promise to increase political participation, these policy instruments may have multidimensional and differential effects that can increase or decrease the representativeness of turnout. We develop an approach that allows us to estimate these effects and assess the impact of postal voting on representational inequality in Swiss referendums using individual-level ($N = 79,\; 000$) and aggregate-level data from 1981 to 2009. We find that postal voting mobilizes equally across a wide range of political and sociodemographic groups but more strongly activates high earners, those with medium education levels, and less politically interested individuals. Yet, those who vote are not less politically knowledgeable and the effects on the composition of turnout remain limited. Our results inform research on the consequences of electoral reforms meant to increase political participation in large electorates.