Multidimensional Economic Voting in a multi-level governance: The case of the Compleat Economic Voter in Belgium

Recent literature has suggested that economic voting should be considered a multidimensional concept where valence economy is one aspect of the compleat economic voter, along with voters’ position on economic policy and their patrimonial belongings, i.e., ownership of assets (Lewis-Beck, Nadeau and Foucault 2013). We run the 2019 Belgian election study which uses a unique set of questions for the national, regional and European Parliament elections held on the same day in May 2019 in Belgium. Using this data we investigate the multidimensionality of economic voting in multilevel governance, combined with a complex federal electoral setting. First, we test the compleat economic voter in different types of elections simultaneously, i.e., federal, regional and European Parliament (EP) elections, which provides us with information about different sets of economic voting behaviours among Belgian voters across different types of elections. Second, this allows us to distinguish between first- and second-order elections among the three types of elections. We find evidence that national and regional elections in Belgium have first order characteristics, while EP elections only mirror national competition. Third, our results point to differences among voters, where economic policy is more salient in regional elections as compared to valence economic voting, which is predominant in national competitions. Finally, the unique data set of the 2019 Belgian elections - where the two regions, Flanders and Wallonia, had different level of clarity of responsibility (i.e., Wallonia had one incumbent, while Flanders had multiple incumbent parties with changes in government) allows for a test of the clarity of responsibility hypothesis in the regional competitions. Therefore, this structural characteristic adds to the complexity of multilevel government. This study has important contribution to the multidimensional concept of economic voting and to the ways economic voting is channeled through multilevel governance.