Department of Methodology Seminar Series - Dr Zach Dickson, LSE

Public Service Decline and Support for the Populist Right: Evidence from England's National Health Service
The rise of the populist right is extensively studied, yet relatively little attention has been paid to how the delivery of core public services may drive voter support for such parties. Given that public services are often the primary means through which citizens interact with the state, we argue that declining public service performance has the potential to create grievances with the political establishment that increase the appeal of populist right parties.  We examine this empirically in the British context, focusing on one of the core aspects of public service provision in the UK -- the publicly funded National Health Service (NHS). We combine government administrative panel data on the times and locations of local health care facilities closures with fine-grained geo-spatial panel data on public preferences and voting intention. A staggered difference-in-differences design demonstrate the corrosive effects of declining public service performance, revealing decreased patient satisfaction and increased support for populist right parties in areas directly affected by closures. We further document that these effects are particularly pronounced in local areas with rising immigration and registrations of migrants at local health practices. Our findings thus contribute to the literature on the rise of the populist right, demonstrating the role of public service delivery in driving support for populist parties, especially in local areas undergoing rapid demographic change.

Host or Publisher Department of Methodology, LSE