Sozialpolitik im Finanzföderalismus – Hartz IV als Antwort auf die Krise der Kommunalfinanzen

In the literature on welfare state reforms, continental welfare states like Germany have been considered to be resistant to reform. However, recently scholars started to argue that new reform coalitions and policy learning have led to a major restructuring of the German welfare state. In this article we introduce a third argument into the debate and claim that the recent reforms can only be understood by taking into account the specific structure of welfare state financing in Germany. Focusing on the reform of unemployment benefits we show that the crisis of the widespread cost-shifting practice between the federal budget, the social insurance and local authority budgets contributed to fiscal problems which could ultimately only be resolved by engaging in a fundamental restructuring of the financing architecture of welfare provisions for the long-term unemployed.     

Comparing the Australian and Scandinavian Welfare States

This paper Compares and Contrasts the Australian and Scandinavian welfare states with a view to demonstrating that, whilst the extent of welfare expenditures and the instruments of social policy vary quite markedly in these countria, policy outcomes in terms of levels of inequality and poverty and social protection are much more similar. In the course of this comparison. the paper casts serious doubts on the usefulness of both the prevailing paradigms for evaluating welfare state performance: measures of expenditure effort and measures of welfare decommodification. Instead. it is argued that welfare state performance can only be properly assessed, as Richard Titmuss pointed out many years ago, by evaluating the impact of fiscal and occupational welfare in addition to the extent and character of the explicit expenditures of the state. When we broaden our conception of social policy in this way. Australia appears much less of a welfare state laggard than it is often taken to be and the oft mooted Scandinavian claim to welfare superiority is. perhaps. rather less compelling than is sometimes argued.     

Deregulation as regulatory reform: the case of environmental policy in the Netherlands

Abstract. Deregulation in the Netherlands has been associated with the perceived crisis of the welfare state. But in the area of environmental policy it has not meant dismantling those substantive regulations designed to promote improved environmental quality. Deregulation in environmental management has involved the retention of overall regulatory objectives while striving to simplify and streamline existing regulatory procedures, and developing alternatives to the more traditional instruments of regulation. Deregulation in this area is a prime example of 're-regulation'- of steps taken to make existing regulations more effective, or to replace rules with other instruments designed to achieve more effectively and efficiently the same behavioural changes sought with the original regulatory scheme.     

Regierungsbildung im deutschen Fünf-Parteiensystem

Since 2005 all five parliamentary parties in the German Bundestag have coalition potential in the sense that they are able to enter at least one minimal winning coalition, that is a coalition without parties which are not necessary for a majority. Given the number of each party’s members of parliament, the strategic coalition situation is fixed as the set of possible minimal winning coalitions. With certain assumptions (no party will gain an absolute majority, the party system consists of two larger and three smaller parties etc.) two strategic coalition situations are possible as a consequence of the Bundestag election in September 2009: the same as the existing one where only CDU/CSU and SPD can form a two party majority government, and an alternative, predicted currently (February/March 2009) by pollsters, where the largest party, probably the CDU/CSU, can form a two party majority coalition also with the third largest party, probably the FDP. In addition, several three party coalitions are also possible. Which of these coalitions will actually be formed will be determined by the policy distances between the parties which are identified in a two dimensional policy space (economic and social issue positions of parties). The possible minimal winning coalitions are further constrained by the majority coalitions in the so-called cycle set as defined by Schofield.     

Market imperfections,government imperfections,and policy mixes: policy innovations in Singapore

Proper roles for government and market in addressing policy problems may be assessed by considering the duality between market imperfections and government imperfections. The potential of government interventions or market mechanisms as core policy instruments can be eroded by fundamental deficiencies deeply rooted in either government or market as social institutions. The impacts of such deficiencies are much more extensive than postulated by the existing theories. Analysis here, based on policy innovations in land transport and health care in Singapore, suggests how policy mixes might become the norm of response for addressing policy problems found in a range of sectors. The analytical framework presented may help to distinguish among different policy mixes according to their effectiveness, but also provides some useful guiding principles for policy design.     

Varieties of Social Policy by Other Means: Lessons for Comparative Welfare State Research

Abstract

Scholars can take a broader look at social policy and understand that traditional public welfare state programs are only one of the many potential sources of social protection and regulation. The contributions of this special issue invite social policy scholars to explore policy instruments that provide “social policy by other means” across a wide array of areas, including agriculture, energy, immigration, taxation, and legal regulation of private benefits and services. The article provides a concise overview of some of the key theoretical and empirical implications of social policy by other means for comparative welfare state research. In order to do this, it is divided into two main sections, which respectively discuss the nature and boundaries of social policy and the varieties of social policy by other means. This is followed by a short conclusion, which summarizes the key lessons of this special issue for comparative welfare state research.     

Identifying Welfare State Regimes: The Links Between Politics, Instruments and Outcomes

With new sources of cross-national data appearing on income distribution and the characteristics of redistributional policy instruments, it is now possible to take the comparative analysis of welfare states well beyond the conventional focus on government expenditures. This study of 18 OECD nations examines the linkages between various aspects of the income redistribution process, elaborates a typology of welfare state regimes and locates the political origins of each of these regimes.     

A Bridge in Flux: Narratives and the Policy Process in the Pacific Northwest

Policy narratives play an important role in the policy process. Often policy narratives originate from advocacy coalitions seeking increased support from the public for their policy stance. Although most Narrative Policy Framework studies have focused on national policy issues, this study examines a state and local economic development project by exploring the policy narratives from competing coalitions in favor and opposed to the project. Specifically, in the Portland–Vancouver area of Oregon and Washington, local policy discussions have been dominated by a proposal for a new mega bridge on Interstate‐5 connecting the two cities across the Columbia River. A new government agency (CRC—Columbia River Crossing) was formed for the implementation of this project. Upon approval of a proposal, CRC experienced heavy backlash from citizens, local businesses, community leaders, and other stakeholders leading to the formation of two competing coalitions in opposition and support of the bridge. This study, using content analysis of 370 public documents, finds that competing coalitions utilize policy narratives in strategic ways to characterize the opposing coalition, themselves, and other actors in the policy subsystem. This study also suggests that the strength and cohesion of a coalition's narrative contributes to its policy success and the winning/losing status of a coalition potentially determines the types of strategies they will use. Last, this study introduces and tests a new narrative strategy called the impotent shift testing a coalition's strategic use of the victim character.     

POLITICS, POLICY MAKING AND PRESSURE GROUPS: SOME SUGGESTIONS FOR REFORM OF THE AUSTRALIAN POLITICAL SYSTEM

Abstract: In Australia, current policy making is characterized by immobilism, drift and "pluralistic stagnation". The problem is not lack of technical expertise, but the mobilization of political consent in a polity in which pressure groups have proliferated. In the post-war period, the welfare state/managed economy has transformed the role of government and the potential power of pressure groups. New networks of interdependency have developed. Some of the principal groups are beneficiaries of redistributive programs, producer groups, state and local government agencies and professionals in government. Their potential power has been made actual by a new participative ethic. The post-materialist values of which this is part also result in the growth of groups focusing on quality of life and moral issues. In this context the political parties are losing their central place in the polity and the centralized organs of executive government appear over-secretive and aloof. Reforms are needed to realign institutions with the new cultural and structural realities. Broader interest group involvement is needed. Parliament, through a committee system, could play a major role and its historical function as custodian of the public interest should be revived. Departments must find new ways to involve more groups in policy formulation and implementation. Information must be shared more widely and policy analysts and advisors should work more closely with groups in defining issues, negotiating alternatives and encouraging the development of supportive coalitions. New "intelligence" and "outreach" functions within the public service are required, and the existing approaches of policy units and research bureaux should be remodelled.     

Path-Dependent Danish Welfare Reforms: The Contribution of the New Institutionalisms to Understanding Evolutionary Change

Political attempts to reform existing policies often fail to bring about substantial change. When they succeed, the new policy is heavily influenced by the pre-existing policy path. This is confirmed by the story of Danish welfare reforms in the 1980s and 1990s, which can be explained in terms of their path dependency. In order to understand better the mechanisms of path dependency I draw on the fundamental insights of the new institutionalisms: rational choice institutionalism, historical institutionalism, and social constructivist institutionalism. The article begins with a brief presentation and comparison of the three new institutionalisms. It then discusses the dialectics of path shaping and path dependency before seeking to explicate the mechanisms of path dependency. Finally, the various accounts of path dependency are applied in an empirical study of the failure of welfare retrenchment in the 1980s and the relatively successful restructuring of the welfare state in the 1990s.     

Europeanization or Party Politics? Explaining Government Choice for Corporatist Concertation

This article assesses whether changes in government choice for policy concertation with trade unions and employers are better explained by international or domestic factors. We compare patterns of corporatist governance in a strongly Europeanized policy domain (labor migration policy) and in a weakly Europeanized policy domain (welfare state reforms) over the last 20 years in Austria and Switzerland. We show that there is no systematic difference in patterns of concertation between the two policy sectors and that factors linked to party politics play a bigger role in the choice of governments for concertation. If the base of party support for policies is divided, governments are more prone to resort to corporatist concertation as a way to build compromises for potentially controversial or unpopular policies. By contrast, ideologically cohesive majority coalitions are less prone to resort to concertation because they do not need to build compromises outside their base of party support.     

Policy making and collective action: Defining coalitions within the advocacy coalition framework

Research on policy communities, policy networks, and advocacy coalitions represents the most recent effort by policy scholars in North America and Europe to meaningfully describe and explain the complex, dynamic policy making processes of modern societies. While work in this tradition has been extraordinarily productive, issues of collective action have not been carefully addressed. Focusing on the advocacy coalitions (AC) framework developed by Sabatier (1988) and Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith (1993) as an example of a productive research program within the policy network tradition, this article (1) examines the potential of the AC framework, with its emphasis on beliefs, policy learning, and preference formation, to provide richer explanations of policy making processes than frameworks grounded exclusively in instrumental rationality; (2) suggests that paradoxically, however, the AC framework can more fully realize its potential by admitting the explanations of collective action from frameworks based on instrumental rationality; (3) incorporates within the AC framework accounts of how coalitions form and maintain themselves over time and of the types of strategies coalitions are likely to adopt to pursue their policy goals; and (4) derives falsifiable collective action hypotheses that can be empirically tested to determine whether incorporating theories of collective action within the AC framework represents a positive, rather than a degenerative, expansion of the AC framework.     

Three Decades of Policy Layering and Politically Sustainable Reform in the European Union's Agricultural Policy

The study of policy reform has tended to focus on single‐stage reforms taking place over a relatively short period. Recent research has drawn attention to gradual policy changes unfolding over extended periods. One strategy of gradual change is layering, in which new policy dimensions are introduced by adding new policy instruments or by redesigning existing ones to address new concerns. The limited research on single‐stage policy reforms highlights that these may not endure in the postenactment phase when circumstances change. We argue that gradual policy layering may create sustainability dynamics that can result in lasting reform trajectories. The European Union's Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) has changed substantially over the last three decades in response to emerging policy concerns by adding new layers. This succession of reforms proved durable and resilient to reversal in the lead‐up to the 2013 CAP reform when institutional and political circumstances changed.     

Should brands “nudge us for good”? Towards a critical assessment of neuro‐liberal corporate social responsibility

This article critically investigates the recent emergence of neuro‐liberal corporate social responsibility (CSR). Neuro‐liberal CSR is inspired by libertarian paternalism, a form of behavioural governance popularised by behavioural economist Richard Thaler and legal scholar Cass Sunstein in their bestseller Nudge (2008). Libertarian paternalism presumes humans to be “predictably irrational” due to hardwired cognitive biases and thus advocates the design of policy interventions that use human psychology for correcting these shortcomings in ways that benefit individuals and society. Although the use of “nudging” interventions has been critically scrutinised in the context of public policy, little attention has been paid to the adoption of libertarian paternalist principles in the corporate world. This paper uses Nudging for Good, an initiative by the European Brands Association (AIM), to illustrate how major corporations adopt and frame corporate nudging as a new and purportedly highly effective form of CSR. However, as this paper argues, neuro‐liberal CSR raises concerns regarding its effectiveness, transparency, and its individualisation and de‐politicisation of social ills.     

Status polarization of social welfare attitudes

This paper tests two competing theories of status polarization of social welfare attitudes. One theory, which can broadly be termedsocial-psychological, sees status polarization as a function of identification with social groups. The other, which can be termedeconomic, sees policy preferences as a function of the individual's expected utility from various policies. Using CPS data for the years 1956–1984, we find that the utility maximizing hypothesis has much more explanatory power for the middle and late 1970s. Social class identification, on the other hand, rivals utility maximization as an explanation of policy preferences during the years 1956–1964 and shows a slight resurgence in 1982 and 1984. These results suggest little prospect for a revival of the New Deal party coalitions, barring strong political leadership that defines issues in class terms and polarizes the electorate.     

Different by Design? Analyzing How Governments Justify GMO Liberalization through the Lens of Strategic Communication

GMO liberalization can be seen as politically risky for policy actors; it confronts them with policy‐specific strategic challenges and incentives regarding their policy communication. This perspective has received much more attention in association with two other kinds of policies, welfare state retrenchment and foreign policy. The aim of this paper is thus to situate GMO liberalization within a larger framework and to examine how governments deal with this kind of policy through their communication. The analysis looks at the liberalization of GMOs in Norway and the UK to examine how their communication depends on policy characteristics as well as country‐specific conditions. The findings suggest that the communication of GMO liberalization differs markedly from the communication of welfare state retrenchment and foreign military interventions and that the typical features of GMO policies as well as the sociocultural context of the two countries mattered for how the governments have communicated GMO liberalization.     

“Donate your organs,donate life!” Explicitness in policy instruments

Behavioural research suggests that the intensity with which policy instruments indicate a direction of desired behavioural change affects how target populations respond to them. However, comparative research on policy instruments focuses on their calibration, restrictiveness, density and formal intensity, but does not account for the degree to which they specify the particular policy goal. Moving beyond nudging and “command and control” approaches, this paper adds the dimension of explicitness to existing taxonomies of policy instruments. The explicitness of an instrument results from two questions: first, does the instrument specify a direction of behavioural change? Second, does the instrument attach valence to this behaviour? The paper proposes a stepwise measurement procedure and links explicitness with policy outcomes. A comparative case study of organ donor policy in Switzerland and Spain illustrates how accounting for the explicitness dimension can improve our understanding of policy instruments and their effectiveness.     

When Diversity Works: The Effects of Coalition Composition on the Success of Lobbying Coalitions

Lobbyists frequently join forces to influence policy, yet the success of active lobbying coalitions remains a blind spot in the literature. This article is the first to test how and when characteristics of active coalitions increase their lobbying success. Based on pluralist theory, one can expect diverse coalitions, uniting different societal interests, to signal broad support to policy makers. Yet, their responsiveness to this signal (i.e., signaling benefits) and contribution incentives within the coalition (i.e., cooperation costs) are likely to vary with issue salience. This theory is tested on a unique data set comprising 50 issues in five European countries. Results reveal a strong moderating effect of salience on the relationship between coalition diversity and success: On less salient issues, homogenous coalitions are more likely to succeed, whereas the effect reverses with higher salience, where diverse coalitions are more successful. These findings have implications for understanding political responsiveness and potential policy capture.     

Politics and the New American Welfare States

Federal law allows states to create new welfare policies determining who can receive welfare, what types of clients are exempted from new welfare work requirements, and the value of cash benefits. This project tests nine different theoretical explanations of welfare policy to explain why states have reacted differently to this new authority. We test these explanations on Temporary Aid to Needy Families (TANF) policies promulgated between 1997 and 2000. Our findings confirm the strong role of race in TANF politics that Soss et al. (2001) recently reported, but we also find that other constituent characteristics, and institutions, paternalistic goals, and state resources have a consistent influence on welfare policy. These results indicate that different approaches to welfare are attributable to the unique, and very potent, combination of political characteristics in each state.     

The tax-welfare mix: explaining Japan's weak extractive capacity

Abstract

Despite having the highest level of public debt in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), higher than Greece or Italy, Japan has one of the lowest aggregate tax burdens of the advanced industrial democracies. This paper asks why Japan, once described as a strong developmental state, has had such a weak extractive capacity, an inability to raise revenues to confront deficits and public debt? In contrast to the existing explanations that focus on political institutions, partisan preferences, or economic globalization, this article argues that Japan's ‘tax–welfare mix’ – the combination of taxes and redistributive welfare polices – undermined the state's long-term capacity to secure adequate tax revenue. More than just a source of revenue, taxes can be used directly to achieve redistributive goals, such as targeting low taxes and exemptions to specific groups. This study shows how Japan's tax–welfare mix diminished its extractive capacity through three mechanisms: the political lock-in of a redistributive social bargain struck around low taxes, the timing and sequencing of its tax policy and welfare development, and the erosion of public trust, which undermined tax consent. Beyond offering a new theory of extractive capacity, the tax–welfare mix explains aspects of Japan's tax structure that defy existing explanations and contributes to our understanding of the capitalist development state by highlighting the redistributive political function of tax policy and its long-term impact on state capacity.