Professor Stephen Whitefield awarded a grant to study party representation

Congratulations to Stephen Whitefield, who was been awarded a John Fell OUP Research Fund grant to study how well political parties represent voters during times of economic crisis.

In modern democracies political parties are the primary means by which voters preferences are represented to governments, yet in recent years there has been much talk within and outside academia of a crisis in party representation. Over the last five years, as Europe has faced a series of major economic shocks, governments have been thrown out of office, political parties have been volatile, and the share of votes taken by parties has gyrated wildly. Is party representation failing because of the economic crisis?

To test this question, this project will undertake a set of expert surveys in 27 European countries. The project builds on a similar survey Stephen and Robert Rohrschneider of the University of Kansas conducted in 2007-08, which provided for the first time measures of party stances that could be connected with voters positions. The latest survey results, when combined with measures of country-level economic and political performance and with new measures of citizens political and economic preferences, will help us understand if and how economic crisis has affected party representation.