Globalization, Policy Constraints, and Vote Choice

Abstract

Despite much attention to global markets and domestic politics, political scientists know very little about how globalization influences the most fundamental aspect of representative democracy, the vote. This article presents a model of party choice when the capacity of elites to deliver policy is limited by the global economy. I argue that voters evaluate parties differently when elected representatives are perceived to be constrained by exogenous conditions. Voters respond to globalization by reducing the weight assigned to economic performance evaluations and to party positions on economic issues. To compensate, they increase the salience of noneconomic issues. Analyses of French and British survey data support theoretical claims. Results show that market integration carries greater consequences for domestic politics than implied by recent work on the political economy of industrial democracies.