Democratic societies are characterized by increasing polarization between winners and losers of internal and external economic liberalization. Despite tight politico-economic constraint on national political actors, parties in government are willing and able to interfere in this process by creating and maintaining shelters from international market pressures. With popular demand for socio-economic risk-hedging grossly outweighing governments’ efforts to provide pockets of shelters, we propose that sectoral agency translates into a highly salient topic that informs voters’ choice of party. Specifically, we probe into ‘loyalty’ gaps to emerge over multiple rounds of elections. We expect mainstream clientelistic parties ("machines") to underperform with voters in ‘exposed’ occupations, including former core constituency of both Social democrats and Conservatives.

We employ a quasi-experimental ‘difference in differences’ design for that matter and open by looking into the likely case of Austria. Findings corroborate our main hypotheses for both major centrist parties based on arguments derived from developmental theory, the literature on comparative political economy and party ideology, and premises established in the literature on public perception of social justice.