Policy Design and Domestic Support for International Bailouts (original) (raw)

48 Pages Posted: 19 Oct 2012 Last revised: 17 Jul 2017

Date Written: May 1, 2012

Abstract

Financial bailouts for ailing Eurozone countries face deep and widespread opposition among voters in donor countries, casting major doubts over the political feasibility of further assistance efforts. What is the nature of the opposition and under what conditions can governments obtain broader political support for funding such large-scale, international transfers? Addressing this question, we distinguish theoretically between ‘fundamental’ versus ‘contingent’ attitudes. Whereas the former entail complete rejection or embrace of a policy, contingent attitudes depend on the specific features of the policy and could shift if those features are altered. Combining unique data from an original survey in Germany, the largest donor country, together with an experiment that varies salient policy dimensions, our analysis indicates that less than a quarter of the public exhibits fundamental opposition to the bailouts. Testing a set of theories on contingent attitudes, we find particular sensitivity to the burden-sharing and cost dimensions of the bailouts. Our results imply that the choice of specific features of a rescue package has important consequences for building domestic support for international assistance efforts.

Keywords: bailouts, Eurozone, public opinion, conjoint analysis

JEL Classification: F5, P16, F34, D72

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Bechtel, Michael M. and Hainmueller, Jens and Margalit, Yotam, Policy Design and Domestic Support for International Bailouts (May 1, 2012). European Journal of Political Research, Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2163594 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2163594