Economic Policy and Public Opinion in Spain

Abstract

The socialist party has come to power in Spain just as socialist orthodoxy has fallen out of fashion, at a time of widespread unemployment, and in the wake of memories of prosperity during the last years of Francoism. Drawing on data from a national sample, we examine the preferences of Spaniards with regard to economic policy and the effects of these preferences on support for the government. Economic opinions are relatively uncrystallized, although it is possible to discern a progressive-conservative split. An equally important feature of public opinion is the high level of expectations surrounding government responsibility for economic affairs. These characteristics reflect the disjuncture between economic ideology and actual practice during past decades as well as an older legacy of statist values. Despite the inchoate nature of attitudes on certain economic issues, and because of the high level of expectations regarding economic policy, perceptions of collective economic conditions-that is, sociotropic considerationstend to have a greater impact than traditional cleavages, such as religion, on support for the government.