Does fiscal pressure constrain policy responsiveness? Evidence from Germany

Political responsiveness is highly unequal along class lines, which has triggered a lively debate about potential causes of this political inequality. What has remained largely unexplored in this debate are the structural economic conditions under which policymakers operate. In this contribution, we hypothesize that budgetary pressures affect both the level and the equality of political responsiveness. Using a dataset containing public opinion data on around 450 fiscal policy proposals in Germany between 1980 and 2016, we investigate whether policymakers are more responsive on issues with budgetary consequences under conditions of low fiscal pressure than under conditions of high fiscal pressure. We find that responsiveness indeed varies systematically with the degree of fiscal pressure and that policymakers are less responsive on fiscal issues when fiscal pressure is high. This holds for both left-wing and right-wing governments. In contrast, we do not find strong effects of fiscal pressure on political inequality: responsiveness is not more equal in fiscally more permissive times. However, since different types of policy proposals are adopted in times of high fiscal stress, unequal responsiveness has different policy implications in times of high and low fiscal pressure.