Premium
The Effect that Structural and Investment Funds have on Voter Behaviour in European Parliamentary Elections
Author(s) -
Henceroth Nathan,
Oganesyan Rafael
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
jcms: journal of common market studies
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.54
H-Index - 90
eISSN - 1468-5965
pISSN - 0021-9886
DOI - 10.1111/jcms.12837
Subject(s) - referendum , economics , redistribution (election) , european union , order (exchange) , investment (military) , general election , scope (computer science) , economic policy , political science , finance , politics , law , computer science , programming language
Structural and Investment Funds (SIFs) have become the European Union's most robust redistribution programme. In this article, we demonstrate that SIFs have grown large enough in scope that they are now beginning to function similarly to more established macroeconomic determinants of the vote such as unemployment and GDP growth in European Parliamentary elections. Moreover, SIFs have an electoral effect in a type of election that was previously assumed to be merely a referendum on national government performance: second‐order, EP elections. SIFs serve as an example of how robust public spending can have an electoral effect even in a second‐order election environment.