The origins of redistributive policy preferences: political socialisation with and without a welfare state

Research on the impact of the macroeconomy on individual-level preferences for redistribution has produced varying results. This paper presents a new theory on the presence of an expansive welfare state during one’s formative years as a source of heterogeneity in the effect that macroeconomic conditions have on individuals’ preferences for redistributive policy. This theory is tested using cohort analysis via the British Social Attitudes surveys (1983–2010), with generations coming of age between the end of World War I and today. Findings confirm that cohorts that were socialised before and after the introduction of the welfare state react differently to economic crises: the former become less supportive of redistribution, while the latter become more supportive. The research sheds light on the long-term shifts of support for the welfare state due to generational replacement.     

The political economy of local government financialization and the role of policy diffusion

By analyzing why English local governments have made extensive use of long-term market loans with embedded derivatives, this paper seeks to contribute to the growing literature on local government financialization. Using an original, large-N panel dataset for the period from 1998 to 2014, we show that the configuration of the local political economy is an important driver of financialization processes: a Labour Party majority as well as fiscal and economic stress make it more likely that councils adopt risky financial instruments. As the use of financial innovations has also diffused geographically, policy diffusion impacts local governments as well. Highlighting the conditional effect of finance sector power, which only increases the use of financial innovations in very large councils, as well as the temporal dimension of fiscal and economic stress, we create ample avenues for further research.     

Governing diversity: Dutch political parties' preferences on the role of the state in civic integration policies

This article analyses political debates about civic integration policies in the Netherlands, so as to identify different conceptions of the role of the state in ensuring social cohesion by governing diversity. Drawing on the literature on party systems, it presents an analysis of political party positions on the role of the state in civic integration along two dimensions: economic distribution on the one hand, and sociocultural governance on the other hand. I find that while the large majority of Dutch political parties adopt authoritarian positions on the sociocultural axis in favour of state intervention to protect Dutch culture and identity, their positions diverge significantly on the classic economic Left–Right dimension. The most contentious issue in Dutch civic integration politics is whether the state, the market or individual migrants should be responsible for financing and organising courses. Thus, this article proposes an innovative model for analysing the politics of citizenship, which enables us to comprehend how citizenship policies are shaped not only by views on how identity and culture relate to social cohesion, but also by diverging perspectives on socio-economic justice.     

Policy makers,policy choices,and policy outcomes: The political economy of reform in developing countries

This article presents an analytic model for understanding the role of decision makers in bringing about significant policy and institutional changes and in understanding how processes of agenda setting, decision making, and implementation shape the content, timing, and sustainability of reform initiatives. Central to the model is the assertion that policy elites and the policy making process are important determinants of reform. The framework indicates that circumstances surrounding issue formation, the criteria that decision makers use to select among options, and the characteristics of specific policies are analytic categories that explain a considerable amount about reform outcomes. The model is based on cases developed by participants in twelve initiatives to bring about policy and institutional change in a variety of developing countries.     

State institutions, political power and social policy choices: Reconstructing the origins of Nordic models of social policy

Abstract.  The origins of the Nordic social policy model(s) need to be viewed broadly and historically from its late nineteenth-century initiation to the immediate postwar period (1940s to the early 1960s), when a social democratic model began to consolidate. In reference to the alternate social policy traditions of British poor relief and German occupational insurance, this article analyzes the sociopolitical contexts that finally prevented Scandinavian states from developing similarly, instead enabling development of universalistic social policy. The historical narratives are arranged with respect to four analytical aspects: policy development; the configuration of state institutions; the strength of liberal, conservative and leftist power blocs; and intra-Nordic divergence in all these respects. Such an approach integrates state-centred and power-resources-focused analyses of Nordic welfare.     

Assessing strategic voting in the 2008 US presidential primaries: the role of electoral context,institutional rules,and negative votes

We examine the nature and extent of strategic voting in the 2008 US presidential primary. In doing so, we distinguish positive strategic voters—those casting ballots for their second choice in the primary and general election—from negative strategic voters—those casting ballots for a candidate they want to lose in the general election. We find evidence of both types in 2008. Moreover, we show that the likelihood of voting strategically is related to the electoral and institutional context. Specifically, those who prefer trailing candidates and who live in states with open primaries or with elections after John McCain became the presumed nominee were more likely to vote strategically.     

Public preferences about government spending: Partisan,social, and attitudinal sources of policy differences

Although the causes and consequences of the growth of government have become the focus of increasing scholarly attention, relatively little empirical research has been done about the nature and determinants of individual fiscal preferences. The present study analyzes patterns of partisan, socioeconomic, and attitudinal differentiation in public spending preferences for a variety of government functions. Two important findings emerge from our analysis. First, attitudes about the adequacy of government spending for each of the functions considered are shown to have two dimensions—a support for spending dimension and a support for change dimension. Second, the patterns of partisan and socioeconomic cleavages about government spending are shown to vary significantly across policy domains. This fracturing of demand structures, it is argued, may be one of the root causes of the performance crisis of political institutions.     

Agenda responsiveness in the European Council: public priorities,policy problems and political attention

The existence of political responsiveness in multi-level systems like the EU remains an open question despite significant recent research on the topic. This article studies whether the European Council responds to the shifting policy priorities of European citizens. More specifically, it explores the synchronic and diachronic associations between what people consider to be the most important problems and the political attention devoted to these issues from 2003 to 2014. The economic crisis after 2008 appears to have made the ranking of public concerns and the European Council agenda more alike. However, a detailed examination of the shifts in prioritisation of single issues over time reveals little evidence for dynamic issue responsiveness. Recently the European Council has paid more attention to the issues that the public considered the most pressing problems but the convergence could possibly be driven by the intensity of the underlying policy problems.     

政治秩序的理论基础:涵义、要素与特征

政治秩序是指各政治实体之间的政治关系的规范化过程及其所呈现的状态.政治实体是政治秩序的能动性要素,政治规则是政治秩序的生长性要素,政治控制是政治秩序的实现性要素.政治秩序具有政治性、有限性、关联性和建构性等四项基本特征.     

Experimentation at the interface of science and policy: a multi-case analysis of how policy experiments influence political decision-makers

For decades now, scholars have grappled with questions about how knowledge producers can enhance the influence of their knowledge on users and improve policy making. However, little attention has been paid to how policy experiments, a flexible and ex ante method of policy appraisal, obtain influence over political decision-making. To address this gap, an exploratory framework has been developed that facilitates systematic analysis of multiple experiments, allowing hypotheses to be tested regarding how an experiment’s institutional design can influence the views of political decision-makers. Cash’s categories of effectiveness are used to describe an experiment’s conceptual influence; being how credible, salient, and legitimate decision-makers perceive an experiment to be. The hypotheses are tested using 14 experiment cases found relevant to climate adaptation in the Netherlands, with complete survey responses from over 70 respondents. The results show that although, in general, the experiments had medium to high influence on decision-makers, institutional design does have a noticeable impact. Organisers should make choices carefully when designing an experiment, particularly in order to maintain relevance during an experiment’s implementation and to build community acceptance. Suggestions for future research include a comparison of experiment effects with the effects of non-experimental forms of appraisal, such as piloting or ex ante impact assessment.     

Advancing the study of political cleavages through experimentation: Revisiting regionalism and redistributive preferences in Canada

The maintenance of welfare state policies requires citizen support for the provision of a social safety net through taxation and redistribution. Research has shown that a diverse political polity presents a risk to the welfare state; however, Canada bucks the trend and does not see citizen support for economic redistribution decline in response to immigration-based population diversity. Using Canada as our case, we argue that scholars of welfare state politics and redistribution should turn their attention to other sources of population heterogeneity in an effort to better understand how different political cleavages affect citizens’ redistributive preferences. We use an online experimental survey to manipulate the in-group identity of 500 Canadians. The survey enables respondents to identify with other in-group identities along regional, linguistic, income-group, and urban/rural characteristics. Our results find that while Canadians do have a strong baseline preference for redistributive behaviour, regional and linguistic cleavages moderate this outcome.     

Connecting models of the individual and policy change processes: a research agenda

Policy Sciences - This article proposes that closer attention to models of the individual provides substantial theoretical and empirical leverage to policy studies scholars. Capturing the nuances...     

Valence characteristics, costly policy and the median-crossing property: A diagrammatic exposition

Voters value valence characteristics such as honesty and competence. In this paper, we consider the situation where candidates may have more than one valence characteristic of importance to the voters. At the same time we introduce a new concept “the median-crossing property" which differs from single-peakedness and is less restrictive than the single-crossing property. If indifference curves satisfy the median-crossing property, then voting is transitive and the majority's preference rankings coincide with those of the median voter; if the indifference curves violate the median-crossing property, then intransitivity may arise. The framework also allows us to consider elections with costly policy.     

Policy,office and votes: An experimental investigation of the dynamic aspect of party goals

Political parties face hard choices when balancing desires to influence public policy, to gain executive office and to win votes. The existing literature examining such party preferences has traditionally focused on rather static aspects of the parties, such as size, policy positions and the level of intraparty democracy. This article argues that party actors' sophisticated estimations of whether to enter into coalition can be affected by fluctuating public opinion, thereby having a more dynamic aspect. Drawing on a survey experiment on youth politicians in Norway, we test how perceived standing in the polls affects how politicians weigh up policy versus office and votes versus office. The experimental effect of perceived standings was investigated in addition to the respondents' positions within the party, as well as their parties' former governing history, political orientation and size. Results show that, in the presence of the treatment condition (party is perceived to do well in the polls), the preference for policy over office is lessened. We find no experimental effect for vote versus office. These results advance our understanding of the dynamic aspects of party goals and coalition formation.     

Cognitive information levels,voter preferences,and local partisan political activity: A field experimental study on the effects of timing and order of message presentation

This article is based upon a factorial design field experiment conducted during the 1980 election campaign. The experiment was conducted to assess whether there is an optimal message strategy available to local party workers in their efforts to inform and persuade voters. The study assesses whether the timing of communications, i.e., near or distant to election day, and the order of message presentation, i.e., whether presenting important information early or late in a communication, have any effects upon voters' information levels and electoral decisions. The analysis supports an interpretation of recency effects, i.e., information presented last in a partisan appeal was more likely to facilitate information and persuasion effects than information positioned first. However, this finding was conditioned upon the timing of message presentation with appeals referencing familiar partisan material only effective near to election day and appeals referencing less familiar and nonpartisan material only effective further from election day.     

Strangers at the gate: the role of multidimensional ideas,policy anomalies and institutional gatekeepers in biofuel policy developments in the USA and European Union

Policy Sciences - This article contributes to scholarly understanding of how policy ideas and institutions interact to affect policy change by investigating why legislation mandating the use of...