How technological change affects regional voting patterns-Reference-Cited by-同舟云学术

How technological change affects regional voting patterns

Published:2023-02-06 Issue:1 Volume:12 Page:94-112
ISSN:2049-8470
Container-title:Political Science Research and Methods
language:en
Short-container-title:PSRM

Author:

Schöll Nikolas,Kurer Thomas^ORCID

Abstract

AbstractDoes technological change fuel political disruption? Drawing on fine-grained labor market data from Germany, this paper examines how technological change affects regional electorates. We first show that the well-known decline in manufacturing and routine jobs in regions with higher robot adoption or investment in information and communication technology (ICT) was more than compensated by parallel employment growth in the service sector and cognitive non-routine occupations. This change in the regional composition of the workforce has important political implications: Workers trained for these new sectors typically hold progressive political values and support progressive pro-system parties. Overall, this composition effect dominates the politically perilous direct effect of automation-induced substitution. As a result, technology-adopting regions are unlikely to turn into populist-authoritarian strongholds.

Publisher

Cambridge University Press (CUP)

Subject

Political Science and International Relations,Sociology and Political Science

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