Political Partisanship and Welfare State Reform in Advanced Industrial Societies

In this article we evaluate two claims made in recent studies of the welfare states of advanced industrial societies: first, that welfare states have remained quite resilient in the face of demands for retrenchment; and second, that partisan politics have ceased to play a decisive role in their evolution. Addressing the first claim, we present analysis from a new data set on unemployment insurance and sickness benefit replacement rates for 18 countries for the years 1975–99. We find considerably more evidence of welfare retrenchment during the last two decades than do recent cross-national studies. Second, we examine the "end of partisanship" claim by estimating the effects of government partisanship on changes in income replacement rates in sickness and unemployment programs. Our results suggest that, contrary to claims that partisanship has little impact on welfare state commitments, traditional partisanship continues to have a considerable effect on welfare state entitlements in the era of retrenchment .     

Partisanship,attribution and approval in a public health shock

Political scientists have long agreed that partisanship can bias how voters evaluate government performance and attribute responsibility. However, less is known about how – and to what extent – these biases work across different types of voters, or how they respond to positive or non-partisan policy outcomes. In this research note we address these questions, focusing on how voters respond to a positive, non-partisan public health shock: the successful early rollout of Covid-19 vaccinations in England. Through a pre-registered information experiment embedded in the British Election Study (N > 6000), we test how voters respond to claims that the quasi-independent National Health Service, rather than the government, deserved credit for the success of the programme. On average, subjects do attribute less responsibility to government, but this has no downstream effect on general approval. Exploratory heterogeneity analyses suggest that government and opposition supporters, as well as historic swing voters, respond homogeneously to our intervention. Our findings are not fully explained by rational or selective frameworks of responsibility attribution, and add nuance to existing experimental work on the political effects of the pandemic.     

Government 'strength' and budget deficits in advanced democracies

Abstract. Roubini and Sachs provided the first systematic test of the idea that political structure the size, composition, diversity, and/or stability of a governing cabinet - is related to budget deficits. In this paper, we take issue with several of Roubini and Sachs' choices concerning data and operationalization, and argue that their approach cannot offer clear conclusions about the relationship between national political structure and budget deficits. We test the 'strength of government' hypothesis using central government finance data on 16 countries, 1959–1990. We measure deficits in a way that maximizes comparability across countries but avoids the potential problems of standardizing by GDP. We examine carefully the definition and measurement of 'strength of government', in light of recent theoretical and empirical work in comparative politics. We perform pooled time-series regression analysis of deficit change in 16 OECD countries for the period 1959–1990. We argue that while structural differences between governments may have little impact on deficits during good economic times, they may become especially noticeable and influential during periods when governments struggle to cope with severe economic problems.     

Negative Issue Ownership

Existing research considers issue ownership to be a positive attribute of political parties, which are seen as ‘owning’ those policy areas where they are particularly competent and engaged. However, for some citizens a party may also be a negative issue owner if it has a particularly bad reputation for its handling of an issue. This article describes and explains aggregate and individual-level patterns of negative issue ownership using a survey-based measure of handling perceptions from the 2013 Austrian National Election Study (n = 3,266). Naming a particular party as a negative issue owner is affected by partisanship, but also by policy preferences and government performance evaluations. The effects of issue importance vary across issues. These findings lay the groundwork for more research on negative attributions of issue ownership and their empirical consequences on vote choice.     

Measuring Partisanship as a Social Identity in Multi-Party Systems

There is no doubt that partisanship is a powerful influence on democratic political behavior. But there is also a lively debate on its nature and origins: Is it largely instrumental in nature and shaped by party performance and issues stances? Or is it basically a long-standing expressive identity reinforced by motivated reasoning and strong emotions? We assess the nature of partisanship in the European context, examining the measurement properties and predictive validity of a multi-item partisan identity scale included in national surveys conducted in the Netherlands, Sweden, and the U.K. Using a latent variable model, we show that an eight-item partisan identity scale provides greater information about partisan intensity than a standard single-item and has the same measurement properties across the three countries. In addition, the identity scale better predicts in-party voting and political participation than a measure of ideological intensity (based on both left–right self-placement and agreement with the party on key issues), providing support for an expressive approach to partisanship in several European democracies.     

Responsibility to Be Enthusiastic? Public Servants and the Public Face of “Promiscuous Partisanship”

Contemporary public service leaders are no longer the anonymous mandarins of Westminster folklore. Whether giving public speeches to outside organizations or communicating directly with the media, senior public servants are emerging from anonymity to become public actors in their own right. This article undertakes a comparative study across four Westminster jurisdictions—Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom—to examine the formal rules and guidelines that apply to public servants when making public statements in their official capacity. Drawing on the late Peter Aucoin's notion of “promiscuous partisanship,” the article argues that public servants are expected to demonstrate a new level of enthusiasm when explaining or justifying government policy to the public. This has implications for the extent to which nonpartisanship can continue to effectively function within Westminster systems.     

Standing apart and sitting together: Enforcing coalition agreements in multiparty systems

Abstract.  One of the most obvious questions to be asked about coalition governments is what these governments do, but this question has received little systematic attention from coalition researchers. A key element of coalition governance that may inform our empirical knowledge of the actions of government – their origin, organization and results – is coalition agreements. Party leaders negotiating a new government invest time in writing coalition agreements, and they do this because they expect beneficial effects: more efficiency in coalition policy making, and more peace in the government. Written coalition agreements are considered to reduce uncertainty and mistrust, and this is why they have become institutionalized in countries with coalition governments. This article presents an approach to the comparative study of coalition conflicts as they emerge during government formation, the management of this conflict through drafting coalition agreements and the effects of this during coalition life. The article sets out a number of expectations about the effects of types of deals that parties make; and asks what types of conflict management are most effective and what are the conditions for enforcement – structural and strategic? In recent comparative work, the features of coalition agreements and mechanisms of coalition governance in Western Europe have received attention. This article sets out, with empirical material, how further comparative research on coalition governance may be developed.     

Partisan Politics and Institutional (Re)Creation: Locating and Explaining the Origins of Modern Finance Capitalism

Why do some countries rely more heavily on equities markets, while others depend more on commercial banking? Analyses of the origins of contemporary capitalist institutions usually look back to the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. However, this paper demonstrates that financial institutions – regarded as central to the way capitalist systems are organised – changed radically in the mid-twentieth century in many countries. This paper argues that government partisanship in formative moments of institutional (re)creation can better account for their modern manifestation than prominent alternative explanations. A new measure of partisanship that is sensitive to these institutional transformations is presented. Case studies on Germany and France offer evidence consistent with this argument.     

Modeling spending preferences & public policy

Understanding preferences over government spending is important for understanding electoral behavior and many other aspects of the political world. Using data on relative preferences for more or less spending across different issue areas, we estimate the general spending preferences of individuals and congressional candidates along a left-right spending dimension. Our modeling approach also allows us to estimate the location of policies on this same dimension, permitting direct comparison of people's spending preferences with where they perceive policy to be. We find that public shows very low levels of polarization on spending preferences, even across characteristics like partisanship, ideology, or income level. The distribution of candidates' spending preferences shows much more sorting by party, but candidates are significantly less polarized than is contemporary voting in Congress.     

Partisan politics and stock market performance: The effect of expected government partisanship on stock returns in the 2002 German federal election

Rational partisan theory suggests that firms perform better under right- than left-leaning governments. In the pre-election time, investors should anticipate these effects of government partisanship. This is the first study to investigate such anticipated partisan effects in Germany. Applying conditional volatility models we analyze the impact of expected government partisanship on stock market performance in the 2002 German federal election. Our results show that small-firm stock returns were positively (negatively) linked to the probability of a right- (left-) leaning coalition winning the election. Moreover, we find that volatility increased as the electoral prospects of right-leaning parties improved, while greater electoral uncertainty had a volatility-reducing effect.     

Measuring Liberal Democratic Performance: an Empirical and Conceptual Critique

Liberal democratic performance is understood as the delivery of liberal democratic values, and not as regime longevity or government efficacy. Measuring it is a matter of how far liberal democratic governments achieve in practice the values they endorse in principle.
It is recognized that the performance of liberal democratic governments varies widely. But extant attempts to measure this variation suffer problems of reliability and validity, and the object of measurement is often unclear.
By defining the range of liberal democratic values we demonstrate that performance is multidimensional and that trade-offs across different values can create distinct performance profiles. The narrow gauge of the extant meaures – usually of just one or two values – is often disguised by single scales that masquerade as summary performance indicators.     

Multidimensional incongruence and vote switching in Europe

Does ideological incongruence hurt parties in elections? Research on the representational relationship between parties and voters suggests that ideological congruence can boost a party’s electoral prospects. However, while the mechanism is at the individual-level, most of the literature focuses on the party-level. In this article, we develop a set of hypotheses based on a multi-issue conception of party-voter congruence at the individual-level, and examine the electoral consequences of these varying congruence levels in the 2014 European Parliament elections. Consistent with our expectations, comparative analysis finds that ideological and issue-specific incongruence is a significant factor in voting behavior in the European Parliament elections. Although the substantive effects of incongruence are understandably small compared to partisanship, government, or EU performance evaluations, party-voter disagreement consistently matters, and voters’ issue salience is an important moderator of the impact of incongruence on vote choice.     

Political Orientation,Party Affiliation,and American Attitudes Towards China

Little is known about how the political orientations and party affiliations of ordinary Americans impact their perceptions of China. Based on our surveys, we find that partisanship does indeed impact American views of China. Self-reported “conservatives” perceive significantly greater threat in China’s rise, hold more negative views of the Chinese government, exhibit more prejudice towards the Chinese people, and advocate a much tougher U.S. China policy than self-reported “liberals” do. Republicans perceive significantly greater threat from China and advocate tougher China policies than Democrats do, but party affiliation has a lesser impact on prejudice scores. Regression analyses reveals that education, gender, and age each has an impact on American views of China, but that impact is negligible compared to partisanship.     

Changing Sides or Changing Minds? Party Identification and Policy Preferences in the American Electorate

Scholars have long debated the individual-level relationship between partisanship and policy preferences. We argue that partisanship and issue attitudes cause changes in each other, but the pattern of influence varies systematically. Issue-based change in party identification should occur among individuals who are aware of party differences on an issue and find that issue to be salient. Individuals who are aware of party differences, but do not attach importance to the issue, should evidence party-based issue change. Those lacking awareness of party differences on an issue should show neither effect. We test our account by examining individuals' party identifications and their attitudes on abortion, government spending and provision of services, and government help for African Americans using the 1992-94-96 National Election Study panel study, finding strong support for our argument. We discuss the implications of our findings both for the microlevel study of party identification and the macrolevel analysis of partisan change.     

Party composition in the American states: Clarifying concepts and explaining changes in partisanship since the 1950s

Students of state politics have long been interested in the partisanship and the degree of interparty competition in the American states. This has led to numerous attempts to quantify state-level partisanship and competition, the most significant by Ranney (1965). Interestingly, however, scholars have never specified clearly the relationship between these two concepts as measured by the Ranney index. This research attempts to do just that and reveals that the two are different measures which are related systematically. More important, understanding changes in a state's partisanship is determined to be crucial to understanding changes in its level of two-party competition. As such, in order to explain changes in partisanship and competition across the American states from the 1950s to the 1970s, we focus on accounting for changes in partisanship. To this end, changes in aggregate demographic variables account very well for states' movement along the Ranney index over the last 3 decades.The names of the authors appear in alphabetical order and imply that this paper is in every way a collaborative enterprise.     

The Social-Psychological Measurement of Partisanship

This article undertakes a comprehensive examination of the social-psychological theory behind the concept of partisanship and addresses how well contemporary measures, especially the ubiquitous NES/Michigan measure, accord with contemporary theories of measurement, attitudes, and group identification. A number of shortcomings with the NES measure are discovered and more recent, psychologically informed measures that address these shortcomings are explored. After a brief empirical demonstration of the utility of these newer measures, recommendations are made for using new theory and new measures to improve our understanding of the role of partisanship in influencing political behavior.     

The Economic Consequences of Partisanship in a Polarized Era

With growing affective polarization in the United States, partisanship is increasingly an impediment to cooperation in political settings. But does partisanship also affect behavior in nonpolitical settings? We show evidence that it does, demonstrating its effect on economic outcomes across a range of experiments in real‐world environments. A field experiment in an online labor market indicates that workers request systematically lower reservation wages when the employer shares their political stance, reflecting a preference to work for co‐partisans. We conduct two field experiments with consumers and find a preference for dealing with co‐partisans, especially among those with strong partisan attachments. Finally, via a population‐based, incentivized survey experiment, we find that the influence of political considerations on economic choices extends also to weaker partisans. Whereas earlier studies show the political consequences of polarization in American politics, our findings suggest that partisanship spills over beyond the political, shaping cooperation in everyday economic behavior.     

Shaky attachments: Individual-level stability and change of partisanship among West German voters, 1984–2001

Abstract.  Individual voters' identification with a political party is believed to be a highly stable core of the political personality, and an 'unmoved mover' of political behaviour. In this article, the authors take advantage of a unique longitudinal database – the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) – to test the basic premise of partisanship's high persistence. Analysing individual-level data from 18 annual panel waves conducted in West Germany between 1984 and 2001, it was found that only a minority of the electorate appears steadfast with regard to partisanship over the entire period. Using event history analysis, the authors demonstrate how movements from partisanship into independence and changes between parties are affected by: personal attributes of voters, especially cognitive mobilisation; by properties of their social contexts, in particular spousal relationships and family constellations; by situational contexts, specifically election campaigns; and by the type of party with which voters identify.     

Structural stress or deliberate decision? Government partisanship and the disempowerment of unions in Denmark

The role of government partisanship in the era of retrenchment is debated. It is argued in this article that partisanship matters for only some aspects of policy. Irrespective of ideological bending, governments accommodate structural pressure as well as short‐term electoral interests to keep the economy on track and implement austerity measures in labour market policy that, in effect, reduce union resources and capacity to mobilise. But only governments of the right exploit structural stress to pursue long‐term interest in curbing the institutional privileges of unions. Aligning short‐ and long‐term interests is easier for social democratic governments during economic expansion, whereas governments of the right have an easier time aligning interests in periods of structural pressure. By analysing a sample of Danish labour market reforms, this article shows that today social democratic governments still defend the institutional privileges of unions and discusses the comparative significance of the Danish case.     

Local Government in Tasmania: Reform and Restructuring

Tasmania has a long history of failed attempts at restructuring local government boundaries yet managed a major reform process of 'modernisation' between 1990 and 1993 that incorporated major changes to council operations together with a restructuring of boundaries and a reduction from 46 to 29 councils. This process can be compared with a recent attempt to reduce further the number of local governments. In April 1997 the Liberal Premier announced reforms ('Directions for Tasmania') that led to a further reduction in the number of councils. This process collapsed following legal challenges and the proroguing of parliament prior to the 1998 state election. The defeat of the Liberal government saw the abandonment of the proposed amalgamations and establishment of 'partnerships' between the new ALP state government and councils. This paper compares the 1990–93 and 1997–98 reform processes and evaluates the outcomes of the amalgamations in 1990–93. It argues that the success of amalgamation and reform in local government has been strongly influenced by the degree of local government involvement and support in the reform process, lessons that have wider application.