What Policies to Emphasise? Partisan Welfare Politics in Advanced Capitalism

• In Event: Poster Session: Comparative Politics in Developing Countries II & Comparative Politics of Advanced Industrial Societies
  In Poster Session: Poster Session: Comparative Politics: Advanced Democracies

Abstract

Post-industrialization has changed European labour markets profoundly. This has led to an increased and reconfigured support coalition for the welfare state. Whereas both working and middle class voters are generally supportive of a big welfare state, the former increasingly votes for the radical right and the latter for the left. Faced with broad demand for social policy, in a responsible government model we would expect parties to converge on social policy issues. However, this convergence is not to be expected if, as I propose, the overall high support for the welfare state masks underlying divides regarding the priorities different social groups attribute to different types of social policies, in particular investment vs. consumption. Hence, once we account for this electoral investment-consumption divide in priorities, we expect parties to differ in the specific design of the welfare state they advocate. Building on the concept of issue yield, I show that parties strategically promote social policies that are highly prioritized within their core electorate and among their potential electorate, resulting in the observation that left parties more strongly weight investment policies, whereas radical right parties emphasise consumption policies. The analyses combine original data on voters’ social policy priorities—as measured through an online-survey conducted in 8 Western European countries—with manifesto data used to measure party emphasis.

Author

• Michael Pinggera, University of Zurich