How unemployment affects electoral participation is a archetypal question in political sociology and of particular relevance in economic crises; in the 1930s as well as during a pandemic. A frequent argument in the literature is that unemployment leads to political withdrawal as the unemployed have to focus on their economy and other personal matters. Some scholars, on the other hand, reason that unemployment triggers political mobilization through feelings of grievance and a strive to protest against leading politicians. However, existing empirical evidence is mixed and often suffers from limitations in data and research design. To make progress on this difficult empirical question, the present study leverages Swedish register data on turnout, spanning nine elections between 1970 and 2018. This extensive panel dataset enables us to more adequately address the causal status of the relationship by relying on the with-in individual variation in turnout. Our results report significant but modest negative effects of both unemployment in general and of losing a relatively well-paid job (job loss). The effects are driven by the young. We also find that the negative effect is less pronounced for those who have previously worked at a workplace where most colleagues participate, supporting a socialization mechanism.

中文翻译：

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失业、工作场所社会化和选举参与：来自瑞典的证据

失业如何影响选举参与是政治社会学中的一个典型问题，与经济危机特别相关；在 1930 年代以及大流行期间。文献中经常出现的一个论点是，失业会导致政治退缩，因为失业者必须专注于经济和其他个人事务。另一方面，一些学者认为，失业会通过不满情绪和对主要政客的抗议而引发政治动员。然而，现有的经验证据参差不齐，而且往往受到数据和研究设计的限制。为了在这个困难的实证问题上取得进展，本研究利用了瑞典的投票率登记数据，涵盖 1970 年至 2018 年的九次选举。这个广泛的面板数据集使我们能够通过依赖投票率的内部个体差异来更充分地解决关系的因果状态。我们的结果报告了总体失业和失去相对高薪工作（失业）的显着但适度的负面影响。影响是由年轻人驱动的。我们还发现，对于那些以前在大多数同事参与、支持社会化机制的工作场所工作的人来说，负面影响不太明显。