Social Policy Preferences and Party Choice in the 2011 Swiss Elections

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Title
Social Policy Preferences and Party Choice in the 2011 Swiss Elections
Journal
Swiss Political Science Review
Author(s)
Fossati Flavia, Häusermann Silja
ISSN
1662-6370
Publication state
Published
Issued date
2014
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Volume
20
Number
4
Pages
590-611
Language
english
Notes
A previous version of this paper was presented at the Swiss Elections Workshop in Solothurn 24-25 October 2013, and at the annual conference of the Swiss Political Science Association in Berne 30-31 January 2014.
Abstract
To what extent do social policy preferences explain party choice? This question has received little attention over the past years, because the bulk of the literature has argued that electoral choice is increasingly shaped by identity-based attitudes, rather than by preferences for economic-distributive social policies. We argue that in the wake of this debate, the significance of social policy preferences for electoral choice has been underestimated, because most contributions neglect social policy debates that are specific to post-industrial societies. In particular, they merely focus on income redistribution, while neglecting distributive conflicts around social investment. The Selects 2011 data allows investigating this crucial distinction for Switzerland. Our empirical analyses confirm that it is pivotal to take the pluridimensionality of distributive conflicts seriously: when looking at preferences for social investment rather than income redistribution, we find that social policy preferences are significant explanatory factors for the choice of the five major Swiss political parties.
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06/01/2015 10:48
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11/05/2023 6:53
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