Hd. Clarke et Mc. Stewart, ECONOMISTS AND ELECTORATES - THE SUBJECTIVE ECONOMY OF GOVERNING PARTY SUPPORT IN CANADA, European Journal of political research, 29(2), 1996, pp. 191-214
This paper uses newly available Canadian data to address long-standing
debates on the rationality of the political economy of party support.
We find that the subjective economic variable driving governing party
support is sociotropic, not egocentric, and, pace recent American and
British studies, prospections do not dominate retrospections. Rather,
models using national economic evaluations encompass rivals employing
national expectations, personal expectations and perceived trends in
personal expectations. Egocentric considerations are not irrelevant; r
ather, their effects on party support are indirect. We argue that thes
e findings are consistent with an image of voters whose party-support
decisions are governed by a 'rough-and-ready' rationality appropriate
to the information available to them and the politico-economic systems
of contemporary Western democracies.