Regimes, Governments, and the Historical Development of Public Services

• In Event: The Comparative Politics of Ideology and Social Support

Abstract

In comparison with the development of taxes and transfers, which is the subject of an enormous literature in political science, the development of public services is not well understood. This paper uses new evidence on heads of government to study the relationship between political regimes, the ideological orientation of governments, and the adoption of key public-service legislation in nineteen countries between 1870 and 1939. It is shown in the paper that the behavior of conservative, liberal, and socialist governments varied greatly depending on the institutions they were appointed under. The paper seeks to explain this finding, and to address the methodological problems that are associated with estimating the joint effects of political institutions and changes in leadership within them.

Authors

• Ben William Ansell, University of Oxford

• Johannes Lindvall, Lund University