Electoral Coalitions and Policy Reversals in Portugal and Italy in the Aftermath of the Eurozone Crisis

This paper links patterns of deregulatory reforms and post-crisis reversals in Italy and Portugal with the electoral constituencies of political parties. Combining insights from the social coalitions and electoral behaviour debates, we link reform outcomes to the class set-up of the electorate in the two countries by using the class schema developed by Daniel Oesch. We find that governments in both countries reversed austerity measures in order to protect core groups of voters within their electorate in spite of wide ideological differences between governing coalitions in the two countries. There is, however, some variation in the extent of the reversals across policy areas.Electoral class coalitions and policy reversals Cases and methods Political context: governments and coalitions in Italy and Portugal Class structure of electoral coalitions in Italy and Portugal Italy: reforms, social blocs, continuity and policy reversals Portugal: electoral coalitions and policy reforms Conclusion Supplemental material Reference