The first article with the title ”Patrimonial Economic Voting in the UK: Homeown- ership and House Price Appreciation” (Chapter 2) is a single-authored piece and has been submitted to the British Journal of Political Science in early September 2018 and is currently under review.
The second article entitled ”An Asymmetric Partisanship Effect: House Price Fluc- tuations and Party Positions” (Chapter 3) is a single-authored article and has been invited for revision and resubmission to the European Journal of Political Research. It has been resubmitted on October 9th, 2018 and is currently under review.
The third article with the title ”Asymmetric Responsiveness: The Effects of Socio- economic Developments on Party Position Shifts” (Chapter 4) is co-authored work with Leonce R¨oth and is, as of October 18th, 2018, currently prepared for submission to the American Journal of Political Science. Both authors contributed equally to the study.
CHAPTER
TWO
PATRIMONIAL ECONOMIC VOTING IN THE UK:
HOMEOWNERSHIP AND HOUSE PRICE APPRECIATION
Abstract
Recent contributions in economic voting show that asset ownership is associated with support for right-wing parties. Moving towards a causal statement about the effect of property ownership on the vote, I develop a dynamic perspective on patrimonial eco- nomic voting and test it with longitudinal data. I focus on the acquisition of assets and changes in asset values to discuss and test their implications on vote choice by looking at the most widespread form of asset ownership, homeownership, in the UK. My results show that recent homeowners are considerably more likely to vote for the Conservative party. I present tentative evidence that this effect is mainly driven by selection effects. Similarly, people owning more valuable houses also show a higher probability to vote for the Tories. Surprisingly, when house values increase, the likelihood to support the Conservatives decreases.
2.1
Introduction
Does asset ownership affect vote choice? While traditional studies of economic voting emphasise the influence of the economy on vote choice (Lewis-Beck, Nadeau and Elias, 2008; Lewis-Beck and Stegmaier, 2000), the recent literature suggests that property ownership also plays an important role in determining the economic vote (Lewis-Beck, Nadeau and Foucault, 2013; Nadeau, Foucault and Lewis-Beck, 2010; Persson and Martinsson, 2016). Conceptually, those studies move beyond the perception of the economy as a valence issue and argue that an individual’s position within the economy is different when owning assets (Persson and Martinsson, 2016; Nadeau, Foucault and Lewis-Beck, 2010). In general, there is ample evidence that asset ownership increases
support for parties of the right, This highlights the importance to move beyond income or occupational status when looking at the economic vote (Nadeau, Foucault and Lewis- Beck, 2011).
So far however, the literature is not overly specific in terms of the causality behind the patrimonial economic vote. The causal processes explaining the voting differential are underspecified and the empirical analyses have so far only used cross-sectional data. For instance, it is unclear how exactly an owner’s different position in the economy looks like and how it influences political behaviour. Therefore, the main objective of this paper is to move closer to a causal statement about the effect of ownership on the vote in theoretical and empirical terms. To do so, I introduce a dynamic perspective1 into the theory of patrimonial economic voting which helps to derive more concise expectations on the causal processes behind the patrimonial economic vote. For instance, it allows us to theorise more explicitly about what happens once individuals acquire assets or when the value of their asset holdings change. As such, a dynamic framework informs us about the emergence and development of patrimonial economic voting over time. From an empirical point of view, a dynamic approach allows to distinguish between different causal pathways such as a changing policy demand or selection effects.
The link from ownership to political behaviour should work differently for different types of assets (Foucault, Nadeau and Lewis-Beck, 2013). I therefore focus on the most widespread form of asset ownership in many countries: homeownership. Looking at one asset type allows to be more precise about the impact of property ownership on in- dividuals. Homeownership is a well-suited laboratory as it is the most widespread form of property and often represents the largest financial investment of a lifetime (Ronald, 2008; Dietz and Haurin, 2003; Schwartz and Seabrooke, 2008). I study the relation- ship between homeownership and vote choice in the United Kingdom. It represents a most-likely case for the patrimonial economic vote in a dynamic setting as its existence there has already been confirmed (Lewis-Beck, Nadeau and Foucault, 2013). Moreover, Britain is also the context where most anecdotal evidence about a conservatising effect of property ownership, more specifically homeownership, has its roots (Dunleavy, 1979; Williams, 1989). Typical descriptions focus on housing policy measures taken by the Thatcher government that systematically created long-lasting electoral support for the Conservative party. Overall, investigating homeownership in the UK is a promising testing ground for a dynamic theory of patrimonial economic voting.
This paper firstly reviews the literature on economic voting before developing the theoretical argument about the effect of homeownership on vote choice. The next section presents the case selection, data and methods before turning to the results of the empirical analysis.