• Catherine Tsai Department of East Asian Languages, Harvard University

• Sawako Shirahase TCJS Director

Do political parties update their welfare policy positions to address voters’ economic needs in times of financial crisis? While existing research on the political consequences of the 2008 Great Recession has shed light on governmental monetary policies and the resulting impact on voter turnout, there is insufficient evidence of party-level analysis on welfare policy transformation. This article shows that political parties put more weight on inclusive welfare economic policy immediately after the Lehman Shock. We drew on the quasi-experimental regression discontinuity in Time (RDiT) approach to test the argument. By looking at 2,608 parliamentary elections and 957 parties from 53 countries between 1990 and 2018, our study shows that left-wing parties were more supportive of welfare policy after the recession. The finding enhances our understanding of the party’s responsiveness to voters’ economic demands. Furthermore, it would contribute to broad political behavior and welfare economics research.

Catherine Tsai is a PhD candidate in the program of History and East Asian Languages. Her research focuses on how the movements of Taiwanese labor and goods created the economic and environmental landscape of the Yaeyama Islands from the 1920s to the 1970s as well as how the migrations across the ocean facilitated acts of local border-making and identity formation distinct from the national boundaries and citizenship status conceived by the Japanese imperial and then the American military governments. She received a BA from the University of California, Davis in 2014, majoring in history and international relations.