(2024):
Rental market risk and radical right support.
[14th Annual Conference of the European Political Science Association, Köln, 04/07/2024 - 06/07/2024].
More
Political Reactions to Local Housing Market Dynamics
Project Directors
Dr. Denis Cohen
MZES-funded
2020 – 2026
Research question/goal:
This project investigates the political repercussions of local housing market dynamics. Recent years have seen rapid, geographically concentrated changes in housing markets. House prices have skyrocketed in many cities and metropolitan areas. These developments have had major effects not only for house owners and on the macro-level distribution of asset wealth but also for renters, intensifying their social and economic risks. Despite the increasing politicisation of these developments and the booming interest in spatial inequalities in political science, we still know surprisingly little about the repercussions of housing market dynamics on voters’ policy preferences, parties’ policy strategies, and electoral outcomes. This research project thus aims to further our understanding of political reactions to housing market dynamics. Combining insights from original surveys in two European countries – Germany and the UK – with administrative data and market statistics on housing markets and information on parties’ policy supply at the local level, it analyses cross-national, geographical, and socio-structural heterogeneity in the political effects of housing markets. Standardised questions and innovative survey experiments are used to gauge the preferences of voters for and the salience they attribute to housing and rent policies. Analysing party policy supply at the local level, the project aims to explain how parties respond to the increasing salience of housing and rent policies and how they strategically react to geographical heterogeneity in voter preferences. Linking these original data collection efforts to geographically fine-grained administrative data and market statistics allows for a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between policy demand and party preferences under varying local contexts. Moreover, it enables a comparison of the political effects of housing market dynamics across localities, socio-structural groups, and countries.
Current stage:
The project has made substantial progress in generating research output and in preparatory work for a planned funding proposal. A peer-reviewed journal article introducing the concept of rental market risk has been published, and a related news media alert has generated broad national coverage and considerable public interest. Work on subnational party policy supply in response to local housing market conditions has also advanced, with additional analyses on rental market risk underway. Further work examining localised policy effects is currently in preparation, complementing the project’s broader agenda on housing, political behaviour, and spatial inequality.
Publications
Presentations
-
-
(2022): The Housing Crisis on Social Media: Housing Markets and the Subnational Diversification of Policy Supply. [2nd Humboldt Political Behavior Workshop, Berlin, 08/09/2022 - 09/09/2022]. More
-
(2022): The Housing Crisis on Social Media: Housing Markets and the Subnational Diversification of Policy Supply. [12th Annual Conference of the European Political Science Association, Prague, 23/06/2022 - 25/06/2022]. More
-
(2022): The Housing Crisis on Social Media: Housing Markets and the Subnational Diversification of Policy Supply. [EUI Mini-Conference on Populism, Liberalism and Party Strategies, Florence, 26/10/2022 - 26/10/2022]. More
-
(2021): The Political Economy of Rental Housing. [Departmental Seminar Series, Department of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Invited Talk), (virtual conference), 07/04/2021 - 07/04/2021]. More