Does being ‘left behind’ corrode government legitimacy? Tax morale and economic stress

Abstract

By now we are familiar with studies which tie being ‘left behind’ to voter support for populist or other extreme views. In the UK case, this is seen in support for Brexit but can also apply to support of parties such as UKIP (e.g. Bolet, 2021; Ford and Goodwin, 2014). Comparative studies show that electoral support for populist parties in part reflects lowered trust in mainstream politics (e.g. Geurkink et al., 2020; Keefer et al., 2021; Mauk, 2020), which is seen as a behavioural indicator of slipping legitimacy. Political support for populist movements is interpreted as declining legitimacy of existing governments, and that decline is seen as being tied to economic stress and the ‘left behind’ areas. In this article, we ask whether economics stresses also have impact upon another and possibly more direct measure of government legitimacy – tax morale.