Electoral context,habit-formation and voter turnout: A new analysis

Drawing on the concept of habitual voting (Plutzer, 2002), Franklin (2004) argues that the effects of electoral context on voter turnout will be largely limited to the cohorts who have experienced few elections in their lifetime. Those with more electoral experience would thus remain unaffected. Testing the above hypothesis is a way of a feasible indirect examination of the concept of habitual voting. Such tests have so far focused primarily on the impact of electoral competitiveness on turnout. I propose a new superior analysis of Franklin's hypothesis that, I claim, approaches the standards of a natural experiment. My test – focusing on the national election cycles as a contextual trait of the European Parliament elections – delivers new evidence supporting this hypothesis.     

Immigration and income redistribution: A political economy analysis

This paper examines the effect of immigration on the extent of income redistribution via majority voting on the income tax. The tax outcome depends on the size of the native majority and the initial amount of redistribution in the economy, which in turn determines the skill composition of immigrants. As a main result, we derive conditions for multiple tax equilibria: if the native majority of either skilled or unskilled is not too strong and immigrants are allowed to vote, both a high-tax and a low-tax outcome is possible. In a referendum, natives will then vote against immigrant voting. At best, natives are indifferent towards immigrant voting.     

A political economic analysis of labor migration and income redistribution

We present a two-country political economic model of income redistribution with internationally mobile labor. Migration can be exogenous and/or endogenous (i.e., determined by labor income differentials). Political influence is determined by the size and homogeneity of the groups, where the latter can be affected by immigration. We show that immigration can increase the transfers to, and the income of, the mobile group. We also investigate the possibility of migration regulation, tax-transfer policy competition and coordination and, finally, coordination of regulation policies. It is shown that the selection of any of those regimes will depend on the particular distribution of political influence among the relevant social groups in the two countries.

     

Electoral incentives and distributive politics in young democracies: Evidence from Chile

How do electoral incentives and institutional constraints vary as democracies consolidate? Are incumbents more inclined to behave opportunistically during transitions, or when the rules of the game are well established? Using Chile as a case study and exploiting panel data on public works investment at the municipal level, the article examines if the strategies to obtain electoral rewards have changed over time. From the first democratic elections and until the constitutional reforms of 2005, those municipalities where the coalition government won in national and local elections were systematically privileged before municipal polls. After the reforms, we find no sign of partisan preference but investment kept on rising during ballot years, indicative of the persistence of political budget cycles. Indeed, we identify stronger cycles as democracy was consolidated. The article concludes discussing the role played by institutional constraints and incentives shaping distributive politics.     

Electoral volatility: Issue effects and basic change in 23 post-war democracies

Growing differences between party votes in successive elections have raised the possibility that party systems are undergoing fundamental change. This cannot be settled until aggregate vote differences are separated into those normally produced by new issues and candidates, and those reflecting an erosion of core support. A saliency theory of party competition and electoral response is used to quantify net shifts in voting produced by issues identified on the basis of campaign reports. Estimates are validated by comparison with others produced on different assumptions and through their success in predicting election results in ten countries. By ‘controlling’ these issue effects we can estimate Basic Votes for each party and election and see whether they have changed.     

The state in industrial relations: A cross-national analysis of developments and socioeconomic effects

Abstract This is a comparative study of the three main roles of the state in industrial relations: the state as employer in the public sector, state intervention in private–sector–wage bargaining, and the procedural role of defining a legal framework for industrial relations. Based on data from 20 OECD countries, the article's analytical focus is twofold. For each of these roles, the paper examines whether there is a convergence towards neoliberal regulation in response to the shift from demand–side to supply–side policies, and whether neoliberalism is superior to alternative regulation forms in terms of performance. No evidence of such dominance of neoliberalism can be found. The upshot is that developments of state regulation are as much path–dependent as its socioeconomic effects are contingent on a country's context.     

Electoral competition and the welfare state

The article investigates how parties compete over the welfare state by emphasising specific welfare state issues. The core argument is that two issue-specific factors determine how much parties emphasise individual welfare state issues: the character of policy problems related to the policy issues and the type of social risks involved. To test the argument, a new large-N dataset is employed, with election manifestos from Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. The dataset contains information on how much parties have talked about health care, education, and labour market protection in national elections since 1980. With the data at hand, it is possible to provide the first systematic investigation of how parties compete for votes over the welfare state. The approach here is able to explain the empirical fact that health care is consistently receiving increased attention everywhere, while particularly labour market protection has witnessed a decline in attention.     

Increasingly unequal turnout in Eastern European new democracies: Communist and transitional legacies versus new institutions

Unequal turnout, namely that educated citizens are more likely to vote, has been a long-standing pre-occupation of scholars of political participation and has been shown to exist across established democracies in varying degrees. Using pooled cross-sectional individual level data covering the period from 1990 to 2007 across 12 post-communist new democracies, this paper examines the applicability of existing explanations for unequal turnout in the Eastern European context. The paper shows that while voting procedures explain some cross-national variation in unequal turnout, turnout inequality is likewise shaped over time by processes related to the transition from communism, primarily the fading of initial excitement with democratic elections. The mechanism of learning among mature voters rather than generational replacement dominates the latter process.     

To have or not to have: Effects of economic inequality on turnout in European democracies

The effect of economic inequality on turnout has received considerable interest recently. Some studies suggest that inequality depresses turnout, others that the relationship is either the other way around or simply non-existent. Employing a large dataset with some 80,000 respondents from 30 European democracies, we show that great care is required when exploring inequality and turnout. On average, there is indeed a negative/positive effect of being below/above the median income in a country – but it is conditioned by inequality (measured as the Gini coefficient) and national wealth (measured as GDP per capita). Moreover, the two country-level factors interact in surprising ways. Based on our results we warn against claims of mono-causal relationships between the economic situation of voters and turnout.     

The politics and economics of revenue growth: A cross-national analysis

Abstract Despite considerable interest in comparative fiscal policy in general, and the high salience of tax policy and tax reform in the industrialized democracies, there are relatively few cross–national studies of the economic and political correlates of revenues over time. We undertake a cross–national time series study of revenue growth in fourteen OECD countries between 1958 and 1990.We test a number of political and economic hypotheses about revenue change, including political business cycle, 'fiscal illusion', elasticity, and ideological theories. For the 1958—1990 period, we find that all countries, regardless of revenue structure, experience higher real revenue growth as a result of inflation, but that revenue growth is more responsive to unemployment in countries that rely more on direct taxes compared to countries with less direct–tax reliance. We find that this effect is most pronounced in the post–1972 period. We also find that revenue tends to increase in the years following elections, consistent with the idea that governments try to minimize the political fallout from tax increases by separating them as much as possible from election campaign periods; this effect, too, is most pronounced in the post–1972 period. We find no support for 'fiscal illusion' and ideological theories of revenue growth.     

Job security regulations in Western democracies: A fuzzy set analysis

This article uses fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to examine the determinants of job security regulations – here understood as restrictions on hiring and firing – in Western democracies. Unlike previous studies, the analysis reveals three different paths to high levels of job security regulations. The first path covers the Southern European state capitalist countries. In these countries, conflicts between forces pushing for liberal democracy and groups alienated from modernisation have led to high levels of statism and crowded out other societal actors. Job security regulations were enacted relatively early in order to provide social security by means available to the state. Due to fragmented welfare states, job security regulations have remained one of the most important pillars of the social protection regime. The second path covers the Continental European managed capitalist countries and is also characterised by high levels of statism. In these countries, repressive governments employed a stick‐and‐carrot strategy to weaken the labour movement and tie the loyalties of the individual to the state. After the Second World War, these countries developed corporatist intermediation systems and encompassing and generous welfare states. Finally, the third path covers the Nordic managed capitalist countries. This path is characterised by a high degree of non‐market coordination, strong labour movements and few institutional veto points. In the Nordic managed capitalist countries, job security regulations traditionally have been subject to collective agreements. However, in the 1960s, labour movements succeeded in pushing through the public legislation of job security despite opposition from employers' associations. Methodologically, this article demonstrates that cross‐national differences in the level of job security regulations can only be explained if the methods used allow for complex causality. In contrast, methods which focus on ‘net effects’ do not offer satisfactory explanations for the cross‐national differences in the level of job security regulations.     

Political parties, electoral systems and democracy: A cross-national analysis

Abstract.  The number of political parties and the type of electoral system may impact the level of democratic functioning within a government. Models are used to explore whether the number of political parties increases a country's democracy score on the POLITY IV measure of democracy, and whether countries with proportional representation electoral systems have higher democracy scores than those without. Multiple regression analysis reveals that countries with proportional electoral systems have higher democracy scores. Countries involved in the Third Wave of democracy may find the choice of an electoral system among the most important issues in structuring a democratic government.     

Democracy and the demand for government redistribution: A survey analysis

This article uses survey data to study the impact of democracy on the demand by poor citizens for government redistribution. Taking the well‐known Meltzer‐Richard theory as the point of departure, three arguments are presented as to why such a demand should be stronger in democracies than in autocracies: in democracies low‐income groups are: (1) exposed to elections that can make a policy difference: (2) better informed about the income distribution; and (3) better equipped to process such information. The argument receives empirical support in a Bayesian multilevel analysis which combines 188 World Values Surveys with cross‐sectional and longitudinal macro data from 80 countries.     

Gradient constraint in voting: The effect of intra-generational social class and income mobility on turnout

As the connection between an individual’s socioeconomic status and electoral participation originates from the socialization process in childhood and adolescence, inequalities in voting are often argued to be relatively stable throughout the life cycle. However, social mobility during adulthood may mitigate the effects of family background. Using individual-level register-based data, this study examines the extent to which changes in adults’ social class and income between 2000 and 2011 influenced voting propensity in the 2012 Finnish municipal elections. The results show that turnout among socially mobile voters settles between the stable members of their socioeconomic group of origin and destination. Our findings imply that intra-generational social and economic mobility can constrain the socioeconomic gradient in turnout.     

Bringing home the votes: Electoral outcomes in state legislative races

This analysis assesses the effects of campaign activity, measured in terms of the campaign expenditures of candidates, on the outcomes of state legislative elections. The research utilizes election results from the 1978 elections for the state houses in California and Iowa. In addition, the investigation specifies the influence of partisan strength and incumbency on election outcomes. Two multiple regression models are estimated, one in which the partisan vote outcome is the dependent variable and one in which the vote of challengers is the dependent variable. Although the results of the inquiry underscore the partisan character of state legislative races, they also show that, akin to congressional contests, a challenger's campaign spending can sometimes have a greater effect on the voting outcome than the incumbent's spending. But these state legislative elections are largely partisan affairs in which bringing home the votes mainly involves support for political parties in the legislative districts and the intensity of campaign efforts represented by campaign expenditures.     

Welfare state reforms and mass media attention: Evidence from three European democracies

The mass media is conventionally assumed to play an important role in welfare state politics. So far, however, we have very little systematic theorizing or empirical evidence of when and how the mass media reports on welfare state reforms. Building on news value theory and the welfare state reform literature, we develop a set of hypotheses about mass media reporting on welfare state reforms. We argue that mass media attention is conditioned not only by the direction of reforms, with cuts getting more attention than expansions, but also by the election platform that the incumbent party ran on in the last election as well as by the policy reputation of the government. Drawing on a new dataset including about 4,800 news articles in British, Danish and German quality newspapers from 1995 to 2014, we find supporting empirical evidence of our expectations.     

Economic hardship and social capital in Europe: A comparative analysis of 27 democracies

This article evaluates whether economic hardship affects social capital in Europe. Comparing 27 European countries, it evaluates the impact of personal experiences of economic hardship on engagement in voluntary associations as a cornerstone of civic and democratic life. Empirical analyses of the Eurobarometer data indicate that individual economic hardship has indeed a negative effect on associational volunteering in Europe. However, the result is qualified in two respects. First, it is found that the effect of individual economic hardship is contingent upon education. Second, this effect mostly refers to volunteering for associations providing solidarity goods (Putnam groups). These results have broader implications for understanding how economic hardship shapes the social capital within democratic societies.