Hard Times, Leaders’ Good Fortune?

Historically, periods of crisis have been seen to favor strong leaders. An assumption that lacks the necessary empirical scrutiny in today’s ‘turbulent times’ and within a comparative perspective. Economic distress, in particular, is often immediately associated with heightened voter dissatisfaction and demands for strong and decisive leadership. Severe economic challenges can also undermine government stability and challenge the democratic governance. While the scholarship has explored the dynamics of political personalization and the role of economic evaluations in shaping voter preferences and electoral outcomes, we know less about how these economic perceptions influence voters’ evaluations of individual political leaders. Drawing on theories of political behavior during crises and political personalization, we expect that dissatisfied voters rely more on individual leaders than on institutional or collective actors. We hypothesize that this results in stronger voter affective attachment to specific leaders over parties and a greater tendency to cast a vote for leaders rather than parties. From this point of view, crises require immediate action, that of strong political leaders, rather than the—somewhat slower, somewhat more complicated to understand—procedures of parties’ representative democracy. At the same time, the magnitude of economic dissatisfaction may erode trust in the entire political class, producing negative evaluations of all current leaders and leaving no leader to benefit from the perceived economic distress. Through this dichotomy—between leaders’ potential to emerge as rallying figures and the risk of a generalized discontent—we frame our inquiry of whether “hard times” truly deliver “leaders’ good fortune.” In our empirical analysis, we utilize original survey data from over 7,000 respondents in seven European countries (Bulgaria, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Poland, and the United Kingdom). Respondents rated multiple national leaders, reported their voting behavior and attachment to leaders and parties, and evaluated their economic satisfaction, both egotropic (at the household level) and sociotropic (at the national level). The study integrates objective economic indicators to contextualize these subjective perceptions as well as other indicators of ‘crisis.’ By leveraging cross-country data, we aim to address whether diverse political and economic environments mediate the relationship between economic grievances and voter attitudes, offering comparative insights into the personalization of politics under hard times. With our research, we aim to contribute to the study of political leadership and the scholarship on elite-voters’ dynamics. Examining the presence of mechanisms through which economic grievances shape individual-level attitudes toward leaders vis-à-vis political parties may provide a theoretical and empirical contribution to the literature on political behavior in times of crisis. The comparative approach can shed light on variations in leader evaluations across diverging macroeconomic contexts as well as against the economic situation at the local level. Finally, it contributes to the study of democratic representation from the point of view of the evolving relationship between political leaders, parties, and voters.