The purpose of this paper is to see whether austerity policies adopted by the Spanish government since 2010 (pay cuts for public employees, pension and social benefits cuts), have changed individuals’ political involvement.
More specifically, we expect that people particularly targeted by these measures (public employees and those perceiving some kind of public subside) will be more likely to increase their levels of political involvement than citizens that have not been affected by these measures as directly. It is to be expected that in the wave of political protests and mobilization produced by the economic crisis, those affected by the fiscal cuts will increase their levels of interest in politics, will increase the frequency of expression of their political dissatisfaction, and will be more likely to participate in politics.
We test our expectations using data from an ongoing online panel survey that includes about 1,800 Spanish individuals between 16 and 45 years of age, surveyed three times between december 2010 and november 2011.
