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Economic Conditions and the Vote: A Contingent Rather Than Categorical Influence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Christian Leithner
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Extract

This article analyses the influence of economic conditions upon the behaviour of voters in elections to Australian, Canadian and New Zealand legislatures between the First and Second World Wars. It shows that this influence need be neither uniform nor unconditional: rather, it is contingent upon both political and economic phenomena. The existence of the relationship as well as its form and strength differ systematically in different settings. It varies according to the stratum of the electorate, the point in time and the type of party analysed.

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Articles
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British Journal of Political Science , Volume 23 , Issue 3 , July 1993 , pp. 339 - 372
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1993

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References

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43 Each constituency in Australia consists of approximately thirty subdivisions. Each constituency in Canada consists of approximately 100 polling divisions, and each constituency in New Zealand consists, on average, of two counties.

44 I choose these three third parties because they contested most elections between the Wars and because they were the most prominent third parties in rural parts of their respective countries. I choose these major parties because they existed continuously throughout the inter-war years and because they formed no pacts or coalitions with these third parties. Their principal opponents (namely, the Nationalist party and United Australia party in Australia; the Liberal party in Canada; and the Reform party, Liberal/United party and National party in New Zealand) do not fulfil these criteria.

45 The social structural variables are ‘grouping variables’ which mitigate the incidence of aggregation bias in the model. See Langbein, Laura I. and Lichtman, Allan J., Sage University Series on Quantitative Applications in the Social Sciences, no. 07–001: Ecological Inference (Beverley Hills, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1976), pp. 11, 15–25.Google Scholar

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50 The formal model consists in an unobserved random variable, z*, which represents the candidate's propensity to contest a particular constituency. The observed counterpart of z*, the actual presence or absence of the candidate, is z. If one sets the unobserved threshold of z* to 0, then one can write z = 1 if z* > 0; z = 0 if z* ≤0. One thus observes the vote only when z = 1, and can express this vote as Y = 1/[1 + exp(–β''X)], z = 1/[1 + exp(– a′ V)]; z = 1, if z* > 0; z = 0 if z* ≤ 0. One mitigates the selection bias problem by applying the standard binary logit analysis to z in order to estimate the coefficients of a; by computing the quantity λ = φ(a′V)/Φ for each observation; and by appending λ to the matrix of independent variables, X, and performing the standard binomial logit analysis. One requires an identification condition in order to estimate models such as these. One variable, voter turnout in the sub-constituency unit, has been included in the V matrix and excluded from the X matrix.

51 Achen, , The Statistical Analysis of Quasi-Experiments, pp. 97–137.Google Scholar

52 The New Zealand election of 1922 has been excluded from the analysis because reliable information about the party affiliations of the candidates who stood at that election are not available. Further, the Progressive party disbanded between the 1930 and 1935 elections; accordingly, results for this party do not appear at the 1935 election.

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