The Voting Behaviour of Temporary Workers

Abstract

In Chapter 3, I have argued that the difference between temporary and permanent workers’ voting behaviour can be interpreted in the framework of the valence model of party choice. In essence, I expect temporary workers to exhibit a stronger tendency to hold the government responsible for their unfavourable personal job situation (if it is unfavourable). The reason is that they can trace the cause of their situation to public policy. As shown in Chapter 2, it is rather obvious that policymakers in many countries have chosen to deregulate temporary employment while they shied away from across-the-board deregulation. In other countries, they have let the labour market ‘drift’ towards dualism, that is, policymakers did not counter the growth of temporary contracts. In addition to (non)reforms in labour law, many scholars argue that policymakers have also adjusted social benefits and active labour market policies, so that permanent workers with a low-risk profile do not have to pay for benefits and services for high-risk outsiders, such as temporary workers (Palier and Thelen, 2010; Rueda, 2007). Following the standard reasoning in the voting literature, the possibility of connecting personal misfortune to government action should lead to a stronger tendency to vote against the incumbent.