Retrospective voting under supranational constraints

Abstract

Economic voting is commonly seen as a cornerstone of democratic accountability. Recent work argues that globalization attenuates it by blurring responsibility and constraining the room to maneuver of domestic governments. Here we explore the consequences of another factor that also shrinks policy maneuver: Membership of Supranational Institutions. In a pre-registered survey experiment fielded in Spain in May 2018, we manipulate information both about economic performance and about the Eurozone rules that constrain domestic policy-making. Our results show that supranational constraints do not attenuate accountability for bad economic outcomes. Instead, supranational constraints lead to a backlash against both the incumbent and other mainstream parties. We interpret the evidence as suggestive that voters blame these parties for having consented to the supranational rules in the first place and for how their implementation limits domestic responses to bad economic performance. These results show that the room to maneuver argument of the globalization literature cannot be simply extended to membership of supranational organizations.