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...