During the past two decades, shifting intellectual currents and real-world developments have stimulated strong interest in the impact of objective economic conditions, such as unemployment and inflation, and subjective economic perceptions on public support for political parties and their leaders in representative democracies. To date, however, fundamental questions remain unanswered, and theoretical controversies and empirical disagreements continue over economic influences on party support. This project addresses important debates by testing multivariate models using monthly time series data to be gathered in Great Britain in the 1992-1997 period. Principal theoretical controversies involve whether citizens' party-support decisions are based on: 1) evaluations of personal or national economic conditions and, relatedly, attributions of government responsibility for such conditions; 2) past or future- oriented economic judgments and, relatedly, willingness to reward or punish governing parties for good/improving or bad/deteriorating economic performance, respectively, or to support a party based on perceptions of different issue priorities; 3) "cold calculations" or emotional reactions to economic information. Also important is the extent to which party identification as a component of party support is driven by ongoing economic performance evaluations. This project addresses such theoretical concerns and data limitations. Regarding the former, the advantages of studying British party support during a five-year period are: 1) economic effects on party support should be substantial - the economy is a matter of longstanding public concern; 2) social-class differences may characterize responses to economic conditions and their impact on party support; 3) the multiparty system facilitates studying how party-system context influences the political economy and dynamics of support for opposition as well as governing parties; 4) economics is not all a changing mix of political events, some being part of the ongoing political process and others being unanticipated by politicians and public alike, should influence short-term movements in party support, including party identification. The research uses data from existing questions about relevant economic and political variables, together with data from new questions added to monthly surveys (May 1992-April 1997) conducted by the British Gallup organization. By adding questions to existing ones in 60 surveys, this cost-effective project can produce the key variables and sufficient time point needed for aggregate-time series analyses of party support during the maximum constitutional term of the current British parliament. The research promises to substantially enhance our understanding of the key issues of the research.
