The Economy and Policy Mood: A Fundamental Dynamic of Democratic Politics?

The goal of this paper is to empirically establish whether or not changes in the aggregate policy preferences of voters in western democracies are systematically related to national economic performance. I pursue this goal through a time-series, crosssectional regression analysis of data on aggregate policy preferences from 14 western democracies (1956-1989). The results support a hypothesis originally suggested, for the American case, by Robert Durr (1993): when the economy expands aggregate policy preferences move left, but when the economy contracts aggregate policy preferences move right. This finding sustains the normatively appealing conclusion that change in aggregate policy preference reflects the measured response of many individuals to changes in their political environment. 1 Students of American Politics have, in recent years, proposed a close causal connection between changes in the aggregate policy preferences of citizens and changes in public policy (Monroe 1979, Page ...