DIGCLASS seminar series: 9th session on deindustrialisation and political consequences

Many see deindustrialization as having generated a politically active group of embittered and reactionary voters motivated by their declining social position as ‘globalization losers’ as a result of their income, education, class or occupation. It has become conventional wisdom that loss of manufacturing jobs in the American economy has spurred support for the Republican party in places which have been 'left behind' in the adaptation to a service-based economy. The aim of this study is to consider unresolved issues in the conceptualization and measurement of place-based deindustrialization and to present an analytical framework for this purpose. We do so by empirically evaluate whether manufacturing job loss increased changed electoral politics, and in particular has it increased support for the Republican party. To do so, we pool electoral results with local administrative data from 1980-2016. Our study shows finds no evidence that manufacturing job loss has impacted the relative popularity of the Republican or Democratic party in US presidential elections from 1980 to 2016. This lack of effect is robust to various model specifications and different measurements of deindustrialization. Our findings show the importance of the long-run to study the presumed consequences of deindustrialization. While politicized plant closures, manufacturing employment decline, and the nostalgia for an industrial past are a convenient explanation, we argue that it does not have an empirical basis and question that the generalized conclusion that this could be changing party support in other contexts as well.

Speaker

Anne-Marie Jeannet is associate professor of sociology at the University of Milan. She studies how changes in the social structure, such as deindustrialization or immigration, alter political life. She is especially interested in how the public perceives these social phenomena and the role of the socio-political context in shaping the public’s response to these occurrences.  Her project DESPO, Deindustrializing Societies and the Political Consequences is funded by an ERC starting grant. The aim of the project is to reveal how a person’s individual, family, and local community experiences of manufacturing decline transform the way they participate in politics and their political attitudes over the course of their life. DESPO focuses on the long-term consequences by studying a rich time frame which spans five decades of manufacturing decline and its political aftermath (1965-2015) in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Germany.

DIGCLASS Seminar Series

The DIGCLASS seminar series is expected to facilitate the exchange of cutting-edge ideas and debates related to social inequality, labour economics and political economy between JRC researchers and beyond by attracting external scholars, policy-makers and a general audience.

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