More equal than others: Assessing economic and citizen groups' access across policymaking venues

This study assesses whether economic interest groups (business associations and trade unions) enjoy better access to the policymaking process than citizen groups. It compares the interest group population in Switzerland with those sets of groups present in the administrative and legislative venues. The study devises an aggregate measure of access to policymaking as a whole, which weights access according to different venues' importance. It theorizes the granting of access as a sequential process. Policymakers first decide whether to grant any access at all (selection stage) and then decide on the amount of access (allocation stage). Empirical evidence shows that policymakers do not discriminate between economic and citizen groups at the selection stage, but that they subsequently grant more access to economic groups. These findings qualify existing research, which interprets economic groups' superior access as the resilience of neo‐corporatism, while also questioning the pluralizing effect of multiple policymaking venues.     

New Insights into Coalition Negotiations—The Case of German Government Formation

Research on coalition negotiations after general elections in parliamentary systems usually focuses on the parties’ utility maximization as corporate actors. However, the most recent process of government formation after the German general election in 2017 followed a different type of logic and led to an outcome unlike that of other coalition negotiations. Regarding policy seeking, office seeking, and vote seeking, the outcomes of both the exploratory talks between Christlich Demokratische Union (CDU)/Christlich-Soziale Union (CSU), Freie Demokratische Partei, and the Greens and the negotiations between CDU/CSU and Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands are at least partly irrational from a cost–benefit analysis. This article examines the formation of Germany’s government in 2017–2018 and reveals the paradoxical outcomes of each phase of the negotiations. Empirical data to underpin the argument stem from interviews with negotiators and statements of direct participants in the formation of the coalition. Instead of the parties’ utility maximization, negotiations were largely dominated by intraparty conflicts, in which individual interests and personal trust rather than partisan unitary programs were most relevant to the negotiation process and outcome. Our work answers the question of why the grand coalition was unexpectedly renewed in the end—contrary to what might be predicted based on established theories of coalition building. The observations and conclusions set forth are of general interest not only for future coalition negotiations in Germany but also for other European parliamentary democracies facing increasing party fragmentation. Most importantly, the analysis yields insights into negotiations undertaken in the absence of rationalist behavior.     

Implementing transition management as policy reforms: a case study of the Dutch energy sector

Proposals to alter large-scale socio-technical systems through government actions in order to promote goals such as sustainability are highly uncertain policy projects. What is being proposed is the replacement of specific elements of existing policy ‘mixes’—the goals and means—by others, in the expectation of avoiding counterproductive or sub-optimal policy outcomes. While laudable, such efforts are fraught with risks; including the possibility of the creation of sub-optimal policy mixes or of failed reform efforts with resulting poor outcomes. This article develops a model and typology of policy regime change processes and outcomes following Thelen and others in arguing that complex policy mixes typically emerge through one or more of four processes, ‘drift’, ‘conversion’, ‘layering’ and ‘replacement’, and that the expected outcomes of these different processes in terms of their ability to meet initial expectations are linked to the manner in which policy goals and means are (or are not) combined in a consistent, coherent and congruent fashion. This propensity is illustrated through examination of the case of energy transition management as practiced in the Netherlands.     

All in the Family: Partisan Disagreement and Electoral Mobilization in Intimate Networks—A Spillover Experiment

We advance the debate about the impact of political disagreement in social networks on electoral participation by addressing issues of causal inference common in network studies, focusing on voters' most important context of interpersonal influence: the household. We leverage a randomly assigned spillover experiment conducted in the United Kingdom, combined with a detailed database of pretreatment party preferences and public turnout records, to identify social influence within heterogeneous and homogeneous partisan households. Our results show that intrahousehold mobilization effects are larger as a result of campaign contact in heterogeneous than in homogeneous partisan households, and larger still when the partisan intensity of the message is exogenously increased, suggesting discussion rather than behavioral contagion as a mechanism. Our results qualify findings from influential observational studies and suggest that within intimate social networks, negative correlations between political heterogeneity and electoral participation are unlikely to result from political disagreement.     

Is Populism Bad For Business? Assessing The Reputational Effect Of Populist Incumbents

This article seeks to assess whether populist incumbents affect their country’s perceived political stability and business climate. Existing evidence contends that populist governments in European democracies produce more moderate policy outcomes than their agendas would suggest. However, populist parties are still regarded as disruptive, as they are perceived to not conforming to the politics of negotiation and compromise that are central to liberal democracies. Therefore, their presence in government may generate political uncertainty and negatively affect the business climate. Drawing on a sample of 26 European democracies between 1996 and 2016, we find that populist incumbency initially generates market uncertainty, but after about two years in office, the negative effect on the business climate vanishes.