Caregiver credits in France, Germany, and Sweden: lessons for the United States

Recently, analysts in the United States (US) have proposed adopting caregiver credits, or pension credits, provided to individuals for time spent out of the workforce while caring for dependent children and sick or elderly relatives. The primary objective of these credits, used in almost all public pension systems in the European Union, is to improve the adequacy of old-age benefits for women whose gaps in workforce participation typically lead to fewer years of contributions, lower lifetime average earnings, and consequently lower pensions. This article examines caregiver credits in the context of future reforms to the US Social Security system, with attention given to the adequacy of current spouse and survivor benefits and how changing marital patterns and family structures have increased the risk of old-age poverty among certain groups of women. It then analyzes caregiver credit programs in selected countries, with particular focus on design, administration, and cost.     

Don't Stand So Close to Me: Spatial Contagion Effects and Party Competition

In this article, we bring together elements from the literatures on economic voting and spatial voting to gain theoretical leverage on the combined role of clarity of responsibility, party policy positions, and economic performance in elections. Building on evidence of voter knowledge, we develop a theory of spatial contagion effects to explain how factors drawn from both of these literatures combine to shape changes in support for political parties. We test this theory with a spatial autoregressive model of party competition in 23 nations from 1951 to 2005. As expected, we find evidence of strong spatial contagion effects in elections with low clarity of responsibility.     

Democracy-Speak: Party Manifestos and Democratic Values in Britain,France and Germany

This article analyses changes in party-manifesto references to democracy in post-war Britain, the French Fifth Republic and the Federal Republic of Germany in order to explore changes in political parties' statements about democracy. It finds that in recent decades parties in all three countries have generally become more supportive of and more vocal in their calls for citizen participation in political decision-making, with a related increase in expressed support for direct democracy and other opportunities for participation. It also finds that left-wing parties have tended to be more enthusiastic than right-wing parties. The article suggests that changes are most likely parties' responses to wider shifts in societal values, and it concludes with a discussion of the significance of democracy-speak for both parties and citizens.     

Constitutional courts as veto players: Lessons from the United States,France and Germany

The number of constitutional courts and supreme courts with constitutional review rights has strongly increased with the third wave of democratisation across the world as an important element of the new constitutionalism. These courts play an important role in day‐to‐day politics as they can nullify acts of parliament and thus prevent or reverse a change in the status quo. In macro‐concepts of comparative politics, their role is unclear. Either they are integrated as counter‐majoritarian institutional features of a political system or they are entirely ignored: some authors do not discuss their potential impact at all, while others dismiss them because they believe their preferences as veto players are entirely absorbed by other actors in the political system. However, we know little about the conditions and variables that determine them as being counter‐majoritarian or veto players. This article employs the concept of Tsebelis’ veto player theory to analyse the question. It focuses on the spatial configuration of veto players in the legislative process and then adds the court as an additional player to find out if it is absorbed in the pareto‐efficient set of the existing players or not. A court which is absorbed by other veto players should not in theory veto new legislation. It is argued in this article that courts are conditional veto players. Their veto is dependent on three variables: the ideological composition of the court; the pattern of government control; and the legislative procedures. To empirically support the analysis, data from the United States, France and Germany from 1974 to 2009 is used. This case selection increases variance with regard to system types and court types. The main finding is that courts are not always absorbed as veto players: during the period of analysis, absorption varies between 11 and 71 per cent in the three systems. Furthermore, the pattern of absorption is specific in each country due to government control, court majority and legislative procedure. Therefore, it can be concluded that they are conditional veto players. The findings have at least two implications. First, constitutional courts and supreme courts with judicial review rights should be systematically included in veto player analysis of political systems and not left aside. Any concept ignoring such courts may lead to invalid results, and any concept that counts such courts merely as an institutional feature may lead to distorted results that over‐ or under‐estimate their impact. Second, the findings also have implications for the study of judicial politics. The main bulk of literature in this area is concerned with auto‐limitation, the so‐called ‘self‐restraint’ of the government to avoid defeat at the court. This auto‐limitation, however, should only occur if a court is not absorbed. However, vetoes observed when the court is absorbed might be explained by strategic behaviour among judges engaging in selective defection.     

Labour market flexibility in West Germany,Britain and France

To resolve the high unemployment rates in many Western European countries, the notion of labour market flexibility has been gaining favour with academics and policy‐makers. This article examines the notion of labour market flexibility in detail and assesses the extent to which it has been implemented in West Germany, Britain and France. It is argued that the most significant developments towards flexibility have occurred in Britain because of the Thatcher government's commitment to neo‐liberal economic policies and because the ‘voluntarist’ British industrial relations system does not represent a barrier to the pursuit of such a policy. By contrast, there has been only a partial incorporation of flexibility initiatives within Germany and France largely because no government in either country has been committed to a full neo‐liberal assault in the existing dense array of national industrial relations institutions, norms and legislation. The article also assesses the extent to which labour market flexibility represents a coherent and workable approach to the challenge of resolving unemployment. In several important respects, we find it an inadequate policy to help restore employment growth in Western Europe.     

Regulatory Commitment to Negotiated Agreements: Evidence from the United States, Germany, The Netherlands, and France

Negotiated Agreements (NAs) are arrangements between firms and regulators in which firms voluntarily agree to reduce their pollution. This article analyzes the institutional features that facilitate or hamper the implementation of NAs. We illustrate the analysis with case studies on the implementation of NAs in the United States, Germany, the Netherlands, and France. We find that NAs are implemented when regulators are able to commit credibly to the objectives of NAs. Institutional environments marked by fragmentation of power and open access in policymaking reduce regulatory credibility and thus hamper the implementation of NAs.     

The electoral connection in staggered parliaments: Evidence from Australia,France, Germany and Japan

This article explores whether differential time horizons in legislative chambers that result from staggered membership renewal affect legislative behaviour. The analysis focuses on patterns of bill initiation and the introduction of amendments in the upper chambers of Australia, France, Germany and Japan – all four of which contain two or more classes of members that face re‐election at different times. Drawing on original comparative data, clear evidence is found of over‐time variation in legislative activity levels in the upper chambers. Approaching elections lead to increased activity levels, with increases in the introduction of bills, but also, to a lesser extent, amending activity. Such variation is found not only for those members facing the most proximate election, but for all members of the chamber. Importantly, there are no significant differences in legislative behaviour between those members up for re‐election and those not facing the electorate in the most proximate election. These patterns are interpreted tentatively as evidence of the paramount importance of political parties in parliamentary systems.     

Repression and reaction: militant democracy and the radical right in Germany and France

The June 2004 elections offered the British National Party unique opportunities for growth. There were three different elections being held at once: for seats on local councils, for the London mayor and the London Assembly, and for members of the European parliament (MEPs). Following boundary changes, the local council election was being conducted on a three-candidates-per-seat basis. The London and European elections were being run according to the rules of proportional representation. Both systems favour minor parties. The BNP went into the elections buoyed up by almost four years of considerable success. However, the party failed to achieve the gains anticipated. After several years that witnessed increasing votes, this was the first instance of the BNP vote stagnating. Renton explains the BNP's failure in terms of a series of factors: poor leadership, tactical errors, the hardening of Conservative anti-BNP voters, the press publicity garnered by the UK Independence Party, and the successful intervention of anti-BNP campaigners.     

Issue definition, political discourse and the politics of nationality reform in France and Germany

Abstract.  This article examines reforms to citizenship, a highly politicized issue, in France and Germany in the 1990s. It begins with the fact that, against a dominant strain of scholarly thought emphasizing path dependence and policy continuity, nationality law was reformed four times in the two countries. Taking this puzzling outcome as its starting point, the article attempts to account for the evolution of nationality law in the two countries. The argument has three components. First, following a now-established line of research, we argue that the terms of political debate have sharply narrowed since the Second World War. Appeals to ethnic bases of identity, national hierarchies and racial homogeneity, easy and natural before 1945, are now politically unacceptable. Second, this narrowing of the terms of discourse has not eliminated political debate over concepts of nationality, belonging and integration, but rather shifted it to a narrower sphere. In other words, political actors express their support for integration (as demanded by political necessity), but seek to redefine integration in a manner that continues to serve exclusionary ends. Third, the eventual policy outcome in citizenship reform reflects in large measure the definition that emerges triumphant from this battle over discourse. The article ends with a reflection on the broader role of argument, language and strategy in the study of comparative politics.     

Varieties of Liberalism: Keynesian Responses to the Great Recession in France and Germany

This article argues that distinctive liberal traditions shaped France and Germany's Keynesian policy responses to the post‐2007 economic crisis. In France, “statist liberalism” privileges an activist state that favors macroeconomic intervention and investment. German “corporate liberalism,” by contrast, is more pluralist and emphasizes the powers and responsibilities of social and economic groups, who are viewed as the fundamental components of the social order. The article argues that these traditions shaped elite interpretations of the crisis and played central roles in defining policy trajectories. They informed a modest French response focused on macroeconomic stimulus that relied on existing income support and a larger German effort centered on a microeconomic strategy of group subsidization. It concludes that these outcomes are inconsistent with traditional institutional accounts and highlights the importance of research on the role of ideas in shaping national responses to economic crises.     

Same Governance,Different Day: Does Metropolitan Reorganization Make a Difference?

This commentary focuses on three points related to the debate about urban governmental restructuring: existing conflicts in the literature regarding the outcomes of local government consolidation; insights about consolidation based on an assessment of the amalgamation of twelve municipal units creating the new city of Ottawa; and, a discussion of a variety of methodological and political factors that may well account for the continuing inconsistency in academic assessments of structural change in local government. One possible explanation for the latter conflict is that governmental reorganization does not really make things substantially different in terms of taxes and services, that is, those outcomes most directly experienced by the average citizen. Over the long term other forces, such as intergovernmental relations and the economy, will tend to negate most of the initial effects of change. While there are likely to be winners and losers related to power in government or regime, it will be argued that in large part, for most citizens, governmental reorganization produces the same governance on a different day.     

Deliberative Innovation to Different Effect: Consensus Conferences in Denmark, France, and the United States

Democratic reformers are attracted by the role that advisory forums composed of lay citizens can play in public consultation on complex policy issues (such as participatory technology assessment). Using a comparative study of consensus conferences on the issue of genetically modified food in Denmark, France, and the United States, the authors show that the potential of such deliberative "mini-publics" is quite different in different sorts of political system. They attend to the mode of establishment, perceived legitimacy, policy impact, and influence on public debate of the forum in each case. In actively inclusive Denmark,mini-publics are deployed in integrative fashion; in exclusive France, in managerial fashion; and in the passively inclusive United States, in advocacy fashion. Proponents and practitioners of deliberative participatory reforms should take into account the constraints and opportunities revealed by this analysis and attend to the different roles that mini-publics might play in different political systems.