Economic voting and state-business relations in OECD countries

ABSTRACT

Regarding the variance of economic voting, the literature draws on various political institutions and individual-level contexts but pays little attention on how to comprehensively analyze political and economic spheres. Given that politics and economy are closely intertwined by resource acquisition and allocation, this study proposes state-business relations (SBR) to explain the variance across countries. The empirical analysis of 31 OECD countries from 1995 to 2019 confirms that the SBR’s explanatory power is significant as a coordination mechanism in a country and moderates political and economic contexts. This study highlights the importance of systematic integration of political and economic spheres and calls for additional efforts to elaborate the nuance of SBR in economic voting across countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Economic voting
• state-business relations
• clarity of responsibility
• politics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea [grant number NRF-2020S1A5C2A03093177] and by the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies Research Fund of 2022.

Notes on contributors

Taeyoung Yoo

Taeyoung Yoo is a Professor at the School of Business, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, South Korea. He holds a PhD in Management from Birkbeck College, University of London. His current research interests draw on organizational and institutional changes in light of identity roles and socio-economic arrangements. His research appears in journals such as Administration & Society, British Journal of Sociology, Corporate Governance, and Organization Studies.

Seoyeon Kim

Seoyeon Kim is a PhD candidate at Emory University, USA. Her research interests lie in examining the effect of institutions on behaviors of political actors, with a regional focus on US and Europe.

Whasun Jho

Whasun Jho is a Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Studies at Yonsei University in Seoul, South Korea. She is a Director of Center for Digital Social Science at Yonsei University and a principal investigator in many projects. She is the author of a book Building Telecom Markets: Evolution of Governance in the Korean Mobile Telecommunication Market (2013) and the co-editor of a book Building e-Governance: Challenges and Opportunities for Democracy, Administration and Law (2004). She has published articles in journals such as Administration & Society, Governance, and Telecommunications Policy.