Professor Catherine De Vries awarded British Academy project grant for how voters reward or punish governments

Congratulations to Catherine De Vries, who has been awared a British Academy grant for a project entitled For better and for worse? Grievance asymmetry in economic voting.

This research project aims to contribute to the literature on how voters reward or punish governments for the state of the economy by testing three related propositions. The first is that, because individuals respond more strongly to negative information, deteriorating economic conditions have a greater effect on voting behaviour than improving economic conditions. Second, it will aim to test the mechanism behind that information asymmetry. In particular, the intention is to see whether the differing impact of better and worse performance is due to the fact that voters hold governments more responsible for poor performance. Finally, it will aim to show that partisanship colours the extent to which individuals use this mechanism of blaming the government for poor economic conditions, but not rewarding them for good. It will test these complex causal relationships by means of a survey experiment.

This project starts on 1 April 2013, and runs until 31 August 2014.