Voting over Redistribution and the Size of the Welfare State: The Role of Turnout

Theories of redistribution inspired by the Downsian model receive little support from empirical investigation. In this article I argue that one of the possible explanations is that the standard Downsian theory, and the empirical specifications derived from it, ignore electoral turnout. Empirical evidence consistently shows that higher-income citizens are more likely to vote; office-seeking candidates should therefore include this probability in their objective function. As a consequence, the pivotal voter is not the median in the income distribution, but is generally richer. Moreover, an increase in income inequality does not unambiguously increase the political demand for redistribution, as most literature takes for granted. Including turnout in the model restores the compatibility of the Downsian theory with current empirical evidence. A regression analysis on panel data for 41 countries in the period 1972–98 confirms the importance of turnout as an explanatory variable for social spending.     

Well-Being in the Welfare State: Level Not Higher, Distribution Not More Equitable

The terms well-being and welfare are Often bracketed together, especially well-being and state welfare. The level of well-being is believed to be higher in welfare states, and its distribution more equitable. This theory is tested here in a comparative study of 41 nations from 1980 to 1990. The size of state welfare is measured by social security expenditures. The well-being of citizens is measured in terms of the degree to which they lead healthy and happy lives. Contrary to expectation, there appears to be no link between the size of the welfare state and the level of well-being within it. In countries with generous social security schemes, people are not healthier or happier than in equally affluent countries where the state is less open-handed. Increases or reductions in social security expenditure are not related to a rise or fall in the level of health and happiness either. There also appears to be no connection between the size of state welfare and equality in well-being among citizens of the state. In countries where social security expenditure is high, the dispersion of health and happiness is not smaller than in equally prosperous countries with less social insurance spending. Again, increases and reductions in social security expenditure are not linked with equality in health and happiness among citizens. This counterintuitive result raises five questions: (1) Is this really true? (2) If so, what could explain this lack of effect? (3) Why is it so difficult to believe this result? (4) How should this information affect social policy? (5) What can we learn from further research?     

The Limits of Control: The Market State,Divided Power,and the Response to 9/11

ABSTRACT

The 9/11 attacks demanded a response from the U.S. government, but designing and executing that response was not easily done. The United States is an advanced market society in which power is highly dispersed. Federal policymakers were confronted with challenges that we now regard as typical of the network form of governance. Their ability to act decisively was constrained by public law, by the political influence and superior knowledge of private industry, and by widespread skepticism about the legitimacy of federal authority. While many commentators worried about the excessive concentration of power in the federal executive branch after 9/11, it might be more accurate to say that the post-9/11 period was typified by a prolonged, and often unsuccessful, effort to induce cooperation and coordination by a range of public and private actors.     

Funding the Welfare State: Globalization and the Taxation of Business in Advanced Market Economies

Theorists assert that international capital mobility creates substantial pressure for all democratically elected governments to decrease tax burdens on business. I explicate and critique the general version of this theory and offer an alternative view. Empirically, I explore whether or not the globalization of capital markets has resulted in decreases in business social security, payroll, and profit taxes. I also investigate whether or not capital mobility has intensified government responsiveness to domestic investment and profitability. Evidence suggests that business tax burdens have not been reduced in the face of rises in capital mobility nor is tax responsiveness to profitability and domestic investment intensified by more open capital markets. To the contrary, analyses indicate that business taxation has become subject to new 'market conforming' policy rules that developed in tandem with liberalization of markets. These new policy orientations reduce the economic management roles of business taxation while leaving the revenue-generating roles intact. In conclusion, I discuss the implications of the findings for questions concerning the structural power of internationally mobile capital, redistributive policies, and the autonomy of democratically elected governments in a global economy.     

The Public/Private Cleavage in a Welfare State: Attitudes Toward Public Management Reform

This study contributes to the growing literature on differences in attitudes between public and private sector employees, particularly with respect to their receptivity or resistance to public management reforms. We begin by asking the question: to what degree does perceived self-interest play a role in accounting for attitudes toward public management reforms such as downsizing, privatization, and public spending? Using attitudinal data from Sweden, a social welfare state with a large public bureaucracy, a tension is observed both among public employees in different levels of government and between public and private sector employees. In the context of public management reforms, national government employees emerge as more right-leaning politically and more supportive of public management reforms than those working in local government. The analysis finds, particularly among national government employees, that while interest as measured here is strongly related to attitudes toward reform, status as a public employee and status as a public bureaucrat are not as significant as other components of interest in accounting for attitudes toward public management reform.     

Decentralization,Local Government,and the Welfare State

Despite growing interest in decentralized governance, the local government systems that comprise the most common element of decentralization around the world have received little systematic attention. This article, drawing on the first systematic index of decentralization to local government in 21 countries, demonstrates a close relation between Social Democratic welfare states and an intergovernmental infrastructure that in important respects ranks as the most decentralized among advanced industrial countries. This empowerment of local government in these countries was less an outgrowth of Social Democratic welfare state development than a preexisting condition that helped make this type of welfare state possible.     

Counter-Reform in the American Welfare State: Ideas,Institutions, and Progressive Taxation

The Nixon/Ford years were a pivotal period when severe fiscal problems emerged whose resolutions constrained the ambit of social policy afterward. A shared diagnosis of economic challenges produced divergent effects in the electoral fortunes of the major political parties and set the stage for an upward redistribution of wealth. Horizontal equity became synonymous with overall tax equity. This article examines how economic ideas acquire political traction.     

福利制度的过程治理：再分配、政府质量与政治信任

改革开放以来,我国经历了从生产主义福利到民生导向适度普惠性福利制度的转型。福利制度通过国家实施的再分配重塑国家与社会关系,为公众提供了理解政治过程的机会窗口,福利制度的过程治理是国家再分配能力的基础来源。福利制度的过程治理要求福利制度从制度设计、制度运行到社会反馈的全过程体现代表性、程序公正和廉洁性等政府质量要素。本文基于实证研究,通过考察政府质量对国家再分配能力提升的重要性,发现政府质量在福利制度生成政治信任时发挥着关键调节作用,代表性、程序公正和廉洁性均显著地影响着再分配项目对政治信任的强化效应,政府质量的中介作用在选择性福利和普惠性福利之间存在异质性效应。总之,共同富裕的政治逻辑要求构建具有代表性、回应性的福利制度决策过程和程序公正、廉洁高效的制度运行过程。     

家庭、国家与儿童福利供给

儿童抚育事务在传统上主要由家庭承担。工业革命之后,西方国家才开始系统关注并发展儿童社会福利,为抚育儿童的父母提供制度化的国家支持,并对父母亲权的实践进行国家监督。尽管不同的儿童社会福利理论对于如何界定家庭与国家在儿童抚育与儿童福利供给过程中的关系模式存有分歧,但是,关注得不到家庭适当抚育的儿童的福利,并为其提供必要的福利服务,已经成为现代国家的共识。鉴于我国传统的以家庭为主的儿童抚育模式出现失灵,积极发展选择性的儿童福利服务具有其充分的合理性。     

Public Opinion, Public Policy and the Welfare State

A recurring problem in political analysis is to link public opinion to public policy. Public opinion has often come to mean the replies to structured questions in representative surveys. The task of connecting opinion and policy is complicated by the difficulty in interpreting replies to these surveys. The burgeoning literature on public opinion and the crisis of the welfare state has failed to provide a consistent account of what aspects of policy might be driven by public demand or vice versa. The interpretations of survey data are either misleading or highly selective. This applies to two crucial areas, attitudes towards poor minorities and opinions about state and private welfare. In order to provide a better understanding of the problems of linking policy and opinion and to offer some guiding principles for research in this area, this paper attempts to clarify some of these difficulties.     

Housing and the Welfare State in Norway

This article discusses housing and the welfare state in Norway in 1980 and 2005 by applying Esping‐Andersen's theories of welfare state regimes to this sector. How should Norwegian housing policy be understood in light of Esping‐Andersen's conceptual framework, and what is the impact of post‐industrial change? In 1980, Norwegian housing policy was mainly characterised by social‐democratic traits such as market regulation, substantial public expenditure and universal subsidies for both renters and a large owner‐occupied housing sector. The effects of post‐industrial changes, including deregulation of the credit and housing markets, marked a major turn in housing policy and the housing market in Norway. By 2005, Norwegian housing policy was mainly characterised by traits that are typical of a liberal welfare regime: market economics, low public expenditure and subsidies for small, targeted groups, while other segments of the Norwegian welfare state remain characterised by social‐democratic traits. Esping‐Andersen's claim that the effect of post‐industrial transformation was different in different welfare regimes is thus not supported by the case of the Norwegian housing sector.     

Party Politics and the Organization of the Danish Welfare State, 1890–1920: The Bourgeois Roots of the Modern Welfare State

The role of the Social Democrats in the establishment of the Scandinavian welfare state has been challenged in recent years. Institutional legacies have conditioned post-war Social Democratic reforms, and the bourgeois parties have played a larger role than so far acknowledged. By exploring the origin of five core policies of the early Danish welfare state, it is shown that policy legacy theses cannot account for the pattern of policy organization. Focusing on party and class dynamics, it is demonstrated that the bourgeois parties, and in particular the Liberals, had a crucial influence on the choice of funding model and administrative structure. The distributional and administrative interests of core constituencies shaped the preferences of the bourgeois parties decisively.