"Economic Crisis, Blame and Policy Preferences - Evidence from a Survey Experiment"

Type: 
Lecture
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Building: 
Nador u. 9, Monument Building
Room: 
Gellner
Monday, January 30, 2012 - 5:30pm
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Date: 
Monday, January 30, 2012 - 5:30pm to 7:00pm

The Political Economy Research Group (PERG)

and the Department of Public Policy (DPP)

 

cordially invite you to an interactive lecture with

 

José FERNANDEZ-ALBERTOS

Institute for Public Goods and Policies, Spanish National Research Council (CSIC)

 

Monday, January 30

17:30 in FT Gellner Room.

 

Economic Crisis, Blame and Policy Preferences

Evidence from a Survey Experiment

 

About the lecturer

  José Fernández-Albertos is a Permanent Research Fellow at the Institute for Public Goods and Policies of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). He holds a Ph.D in Political Science from Harvard University and is also a doctor-member of the Juan March Institute in Madrid. His research spans across the fields of international political economy and comparative politics, covering the political underpinnings of economic and monetary integration, the institutional foundations for universalistic public goods provision, and public opinion and electoral politics.

About the lecture

Who do citizens blame for the recent European economic crisis? In this paper we test theories about blame attribution with respect to the economic crisis. We argue that blame for the crisis is partially conditioned by partisan bias and framings of the crisis as being related to globalization. We test the argument with new survey data and a survey experiment from Spain. In the experiment respondents receive different framings of the economic crisis which are endorsed by different political parties. We obtain the following findings: (1) blame for who is responsible for the economic crisis is greatly affected by partisanship; (2) making globalization as a cause of the crisis salient exonerates the government of blame, but only for co-partisans of the government; (3) citizens are willing to blame other globalization-related factors for the crisis, in particular, European governments and foreign investors and blame the domestic government less. The results expand our understanding of public opinion dynamics during major economic recessions, and also suggest conditions under which “scapegoating” globalization can occur. The last section of the talk will also discuss some preliminary results on how different narratives of the crisis affect policy preferences towards welfare and economic policies.

 

About PERG

PERG is a joint student-faculty political economy research group which brings together members from several CEU departments. It aims at fostering collaborative research among the CEU faculty and students across different departments working in the fields of international and comparative political economy, concentrating primarily, but not exclusively, on the area of Central and Eastern Europe. For more, please visit: www.ceu.hu/perg and http://pergceu.blogspot.com/.

 

About DPP

The Department of Public Policy is CEU’s vibrant hub for public policy research and teaching. A growing department, the DPP currently attracts students from 29 countries and is home to faculty from a dozen nations.The department offers US-accredited graduate programs in public policy at the Master’s and the doctoral levels. More information at publicpolicy.ceu.hu.

Political Economy Research Group
Central European University
Nador u. 9
H-1051 Budapest
perg@ceu.hu
http://perg.ceu.hu