Chiara Ferrante, Marco Colagrossi, Nicola Pontarollo (p)

The effects of the Great Recession have been unevenly distributed across European regions. While some promptly reacted to the shock, others were not able to restore their growth path. Such dynamics contributed in generating feelings of discontent across Europe, particularly in those places that experienced a stronger decline. This resentment toward institutions and traditional parties is now shaping a new political geography, being the expression of people’s attitude in the territories.

In this article, we contribute to the understanding of the drivers behind the increasing support for populist parties. We assess whether different degrees of economic resilience to the economic and financial crisis played a role in shaping the voting behavior. To this end, we explore two dimensions of economic resilience. We begin by considering the classical approach, which takes a dynamic perspective on few key variables such as (un)employment and GDP per capita. We then move towards a more comprehensive framework, following an evolutionary approach. This acknowledges that regions are characterized by an inner complexity, where multiple actors such as firms, institutions, and workers interplay with each other and establish relationships with the external world. To proxy these dimensions we examine, among others, sectorial variety, network capacity and institutional quality. To carry out our analysis, we use a novel dataset on voting behaviour at NUTS-2 level covering the whole EU-28 over the period 2000-2018. Through the understanding of the different reactions to the crisis, we clarify the determinants of populist support, and deliver important insights to shape effective policy responses.

María Jesús Delgado Rodríguez (p), Sonia de Lucas Santos (p)

This research examines whether OECD social expenditures have converged since 1980 to 2016 or they show divergent trajectories in the wake of the economic crisis. Based on the data from OECD Social Expenditure Database (SOCX), we employ dynamic factor model analysis and recursive estimation in order to examine the countercyclical effect of social expenditure during the last economic crisis and the existence of cyclical convergence in social expenditures in the OECD countries. We find out that social expenditures have a positive effect in shortening the length of the crisis though we find differences across countries and social expenditure composition. Our findings also provide evidence that convergence is mainly driven by globalization and European Union membership and that the economic crisis has given rise to significant challenges to the wellfare state.