The Political Origins of Social Policy in Liberal Welfare States

• In Event: New Approaches to Conceptualizing and Measuring the Welfare State

Abstract

While there exists a substantial body of evidence supporting power resource theories for the advance of redistributive social policy outputs and contributing to improved socioeconomic conditions, we know much less about how the organization and strength of left affect social policy formulation at the electoral stage. This paper seeks to understand how party systems - particularly the degree of left organization and political competition between parties - affect the policy-making process of politicians and political parties during elections. It builds comparable measures of social policy saliency and formulation by utilizing text analysis of party manifestos from over 30 political parties across 15 countries in Latin America and the Global North. It then employs multilevel models and finds that the ideological position of individual parties alone has no effect on the saliency or formulation of social policy, however politicians and political parties across the ideological spectrum are incentivized to advance social policy initiatives when there is a strong contingent of left party organization and robust political competition within the party system.

Author

• Vincent Mauro, Cornell University