Post-war voters as fiscal liberals: local elections, spending, and war trauma in contemporary Croatia

This study exposes post-war voters’ fiscal liberalism using individual level and aggregate-level data covering a decade and a half of local electoral competition in post-war Croatia. Aggregate-level analysis shows Croatian voters’ fiscal liberalism to be conditional on their communities’ exposure to war violence: greater exposure to violence leads to greater support for fiscally expansionist incumbents. Individual-level analysis, on the other hand, shows post-war voters’ fiscal liberalism as rooted in their different levels of war-related trauma: more feelings of war-related trauma lead to greater economic expectations from the government. Our analysis also shows that voters’ war-conditioned preferences for fiscally expansionist incumbents show little sign of abating over time – a testament to the challenge presented by post-war recovery, and to the impact war exerts on political life long after the bloodshed has ended.