Types of Labor Market Policy and the Realignment of Insecure Workers with Old Left Parties

Recent research finds that workers without secure employment are significantly different from secure workers in their vote choices. What is less explained is conditions in which divergent political behavior of workers with and without secure employment overlaps. Focusing on two types of labor market policies --- unemployment insurance and active labor market programs, this paper examines how more generous government spending on different types of welfare programs shapes electoral behavior of individuals with adverse labor market experience. By using multilevel analysis of 41 elections in 15 European countries from 1996 to 2013, I find that more unemployed and part-time workers tend to support new left parties such as Green parties and left populist parties than ones with secure employment, turning away from traditional left-wing parties. The greater spending on unemployment insurance, however, alters the outcome by realigning insecure workers with old left parties. By contrast, expenditure on active labor market programs has little conditional impact. The important implication of this study is that while government policy does moderate the effect of adverse labor market experience, types of social policy matters in understanding policy feedback effects. I further discuss this point in relation to different redistributive implications of the two labor market programs.