Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-m6dg7 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T15:22:10.831Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Election campaign agendas, government partisanship, and the welfare state

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 October 2015

Niklas Jakobsson  and
Staffan Kumlin
Niklas Jakobsson*
Affiliation:
Norwegian Social Research (NOVA), Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences, Norway Karlstad Business School, Karlstad University, Sweden
Staffan Kumlin
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, University of Gothenburg, Sweden Institute for Social Research, Norway
*
*E-mail: niklas.jakobsson@nova.hioa.no
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Although theoretically contentious, most empirical studies contend that electoral-political factors structure the welfare state. In practice, most studies concentrate on ‘government partisanship’, that is the ideological character of the government. We agree that politics matters but also seek to expand our understanding of what ‘politics’ should be taken to mean. Drawing on recent comparative research on agenda-setting, we study the impact of whether welfare state issues were broadly salient in the public sphere during the election campaign that produced the government. We formulate hypotheses about how such systemic campaign salience and government partisanship (separately and interactively) affect welfare generosity. We also consider how such effects might have changed, taking into account challenges to standard assumptions of representative democracy coming from the ‘new politics of the welfare state’ framework. We combine well-known, but updated, data on welfare state generosity and government partisanship, with original contextual data on campaign salience from 16 West European countries for the years 1980–2008. We find that campaigns matter but also that their impact has changed. During the first half of the examined period (the 1980s and early 1990s), it mainly served to facilitate government partisanship effects on the welfare state. More recently, big-time campaign attention to welfare state issues results in some retrenchment (almost) regardless of who forms the postelection government. This raises concerns about the democratic status of the politics of welfare state reform in Europe.

Keywords

welfare statepolitical partieselection campaignsagenda setting
Type
Research Article
Information
European Political Science Review , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , May 2017 , pp. 183 - 208
Copyright
© European Consortium for Political Research 2015 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achen, C. (2000), ‘Why lagged dependent variables can suppress the explanatory power of other independent variables’. Available at http://www.polmeth.wustl.edu/media/Paper/achen00.pdf Google Scholar
Allan, J.P. and Scruggs, L. (2004), ‘Political partisanship and welfare state reform in advanced industrial societies’, American Journal of Political Science 48(3): 496–512.Google Scholar
Armingeon, K. and Giger, N. (2008a), ‘Conditional punishment: a comparative analysis of the electoral consequences of welfare state retrenchment in OECD nations, 1980–2003’, West European Politics 31(3): 558–580.Google Scholar
Armingeon, K. and Giger, N. (2008b), ‘Conditional punishment: a comparative analysis of the electoral consequences of welfare state retrenchment in OECD nations, 1980–2003’, West European Politics 31(3): 558–580.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Armingeon, K., Weisstanner, D., Engler, S., Potolidis, P., Gerber, M. and Leimgruber, P. (2008), Comparative Political Data Set 1960–2005, Berne: Institute of Political Science.Google Scholar
Balla, S.J., Lawrence, E.D., Maltzman, F. and Sigelman, L. (2002), ‘Partisanship, blame avoidance, and the distribution of legislative pork’, American Journal of Political Science 46(3): 515–525.Google Scholar
Baumgartner, F.R., Green-Pedersen, C. and Jones, B.D. (2006), ‘Comparative studies of policy agendas’, Journal of European Public Policy 13(7): 959–974.Google Scholar
Baumgartner, F.R., Green-Pedersen, C. and Jones, B.D. (eds) (2008), Comparative Studies of Policy Agendas, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Baumgartner, F.R., Jones, B.D. and Wilkerson, J. (2011), ‘Comparative studies of policy dynamics’, Comparative Political Studies 44(8): 947–972.Google Scholar
Baumgartner, F.R., Breunig, C., Green-Pedersen, C., Jones, B.D., Mortensen, P.B., Nuytemans, M. and Walgrave, S. (2009), ‘Punctuated equilibrium in comparative perspective’, American Journal of Political Science 53(3): 603–620.Google Scholar
Beck, N. and Katz, J.N. (1995), ‘What to do (and not to do) with time-series cross-section data’, The American Political Science Review 89(3): 634–647.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bell, Daniel (1960), The End of Ideology, Glencoe: The Free Press.Google Scholar
Berelson, B., Lazarsfeld, P.F. and McPhee, W.N. (1954), Voting. A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Blumler, J. and Gurevitch, M. (1975), ‘Towards a comparative framework for political communication research’, in S.H. Chaffee (ed.), Political Communication: Issues and Strategies for Research, Beverly Hills, CA: Sage, pp. 165–193.Google Scholar
Bonoli, G. (2012), ‘Blame avoidance and credit claiming revisited’, in G. Bonoli and D. Natali (ed.), The Politics of the New Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 93–110.Google Scholar
Boswell, J. (2012), ‘Why and how narrative matters in deliberative systems’, Political Studies 61(3): 620–636.Google Scholar
Brady, D., Huber, E. and Stephens, J.D. (2014), ‘Comparative Welfare States Data Set’. University of North Carolina, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Chapel Hill.Google Scholar
Brooks, C. and Manza, J. (2007), Why Welfare States Persist: The Importance of Public Opinion in Democracies, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Budge, I. and Klingemann, H.-D. et al. (2001), Mapping Policy Preferences, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Carmines, E. and Stimson, J. (1990), Issue Evolution: Race and the Evolution of American Politics, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Castles, Francis G. (ed.) (2007), The Disappearing State: Retrenchment Realities in an Age of Globalization, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Chinn, M.D. and Ito, H. (2008), ‘A new measure of financial openness’, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis 10(3): 309–322.Google Scholar
Chong, D. and Druckman, J.N. (2007), ‘Framing theory’, Annual Review of Political Science 10: 103–126.Google Scholar
Damore, D.F. (2005), ‘Issue convergence in presidential campaigns’, Political Behavior 27(1): 71–97.Google Scholar
De Vreese, C.H. (2003), ‘Television reporting of second-order elections’, Journalism Studies 4(2): 183–198.Google Scholar
Dearing, J.W. and Rogers, E.M. (1996), Agenda-Setting, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony (1972), ‘Up and down with ecology: the issue-attention cycle’, Public Interest 28: 38–46.Google Scholar
Elmelund-Præstekær, C. and Emmenegger, P. (2013), ‘Strategic re-framing as a vote winner: why vote-seeking governments pursue unpopular reforms’, Scandinavian Political Studies 36(1): 23–42.Google Scholar
Elster, J. (ed.) (1998), Deliberative Democracy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, G. (1990), The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Giger, N. (2010), ‘Do voters punish the government for welfare state retrenchment? A comparative study of electoral costs associated with social policy’, Comparative European Politics 8(4): 415–443.Google Scholar
Giger, N. (2011), The Risk of Social Policy? The Electoral Consequences of Welfare State Retrenchment and Social Policy Performance in OECD Countries, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Giger, N. and Nelson, M. (2011), ‘The electoral consequences of welfare state retrenchment: blame avoidance or credit claiming in the era of permanent austerity?’, European Journal of Political Research 50(1): 1–23.Google Scholar
Gingrich, J. (2011), Making Markets in the Welfare State: The Politics of Varying Market Reforms, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Granberg, D. and Holmberg, S. (1988), The Political System Matters. Social Psychology and Voting Behavior in Sweden and the United States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Green-Pedersen, C. (2001), ‘Welfare state retrenchment in Denmark and the Netherlands, 1982–1998: the role of party competition and party consensus’, Comparative Political Studies 34(9): 963.Google Scholar
Green-Pedersen, C. and Haverland, M. (2002), ‘Review essay: the new politics and scholarship of the welfare state’, Journal of European Social Policy 12(1): 13–51.Google Scholar
Green-Pedersen, C. and Wilkerson, J. (2008), ‘How agenda-setting attributes shape politics: basic dilemmas, problem attention and health politics in Denmark and the US’, in F.R. Baumgartner, C. Green-Pedersen and B.D. Jones (eds), Comparative Studies of Policy Agendas, London: Routledge, pp. 81–94.Google Scholar
Green-Pedersen, C. and Mortensen, P.B. (2010), ‘Who sets the agenda and who responds to it in the Danish parliament? A new model of issue competition and agenda-setting’, European Journal of Political Research 49(2): 257–281.Google Scholar
Häusermann, S. (2010), The Politics of Welfare State Reform in Continental Europe: Modernization in Hard Times, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hay, C. and Wincott, D. (2012), The Political Economy of European Welfare Capitalism, New York: Palgrave-Macmillan.Google Scholar
Hemerijck, A. (2013), Changing Welfare States, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Heston, A., Summers, R. and Aten, B. (2011), ‘Penn World Table Version 7.0’, Income and Prices at the University of Pennsylvania, Center for International Comparisons of Production, Philadelphia.Google Scholar
Hood, C. (2007), ‘What happens when transparancy meets blame avoidance’, Public Management Review 9(2): 191–210.Google Scholar
Huber, E. and Stephens, J.D. (2001), Development and Crisis of the Welfare State: Parties and Policies in Global Markets, Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hutchings, V.L. (2003), Public Opinion and Democratic Accountablity: How Citizens Learn about Democracy, Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
IMF (2007), ‘World Economic Outlook Database’, IMF, Washington.Google Scholar
Immergut, E.M. and Abou-Chadi, T. (2014), ‘How electoral vulnerability affects pension politics: introducing a concept, measure and empirical application’, European Journal of Political Research 53(2): 269–287.Google Scholar
Iversen, T. and Stephens, J.D. (2008), ‘Partisan politics, the welfare state, and three worlds of human capital formation’, Comparative Political Studies 41(4/5): 600–637.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Iyengar, S. (1991), Is Anyone Responsible? How Television Frames Political Issues, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Kingdon, J.W. (2011 [1984]), Agendas, Alternatives, and Public Policies, 2nd edn. Boston, MA: Longman.Google Scholar
Korpi, W. (1983), The Democratic Class Struggle, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Korpi, W. and Palme, J. (2003), ‘New politics and class politics in the context of austerity and globalization: welfare state regress in 18 countries, 1975–95’, American Political Science Review 97: 425–446.Google Scholar
Kumlin, S. and Svallfors, S. (2007), ‘Social stratification and political articulation: why attitudinal class differences vary across countries’, in S. Mau and B. Veghte (eds), Social Justice, Legitimacy and Welfare State, Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 19–46.Google Scholar
Kumlin, S. and Esaiasson, P. (2012), ‘Scandal fatigue? Scandal elections and satisfaction with democracy in Western Europe, 1977–2007’, British Journal of Political Science 42(2): 263–282.Google Scholar
Kumlin, S., Oskarson, M. and Kihlström, D. (2012), ‘Up and down with the welfare state: agenda shifts in West European election campaigns, 1977–2010’. Paper prepared for the 19th International Conference for Europeanists, March 22–24, Boston, MA.Google Scholar
Kumlin, S. and Haugsgjerd, A. (2015), ‘The welfare state and political trust: bringing performance back in’, in S. Zmerli and T. van der Meer (eds), Handbook of Political Trust, Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Levy, J.D. (2010), ‘Welfare retrenchment’, in F.G. Castles, S. Leibfried, J. Lewis, H. Obinger and C. Pierson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 552–569.Google Scholar
Lindbom, A. (2007), ‘Obfuscating retrenchment: Swedish welfare policy in the 1990s’, Journal of Public Policy 27(2): 129–150.Google Scholar
McCombs, M. and Shaw, D.L. (1972), ‘The agenda-setting function of the mass media’, Public Opinion Quarterly 36: 176–187.Google Scholar
Mortensen, P.B. (2010), ‘Political attention and public policy: a study of how agenda setting matters political attention and public policy’, Scandinavian Political Studies 33(4): 356–380.Google Scholar
Naurin, E. (2011), Election Promises, Party Behaviour and Voter Perceptions, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.Google Scholar
Nelson, M. (2013), ‘Making markets with active labour market policies: the influence of political parties, welfare state regimes, and economic change on spending on different types of policies’, European Political Science Review 5(2): 255–277.Google Scholar
Palier, B. (ed.) (2010), A Long Goodbye to Bismarck? The Politics of Welfare Reform in Continental Europe, Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar
Petrocik, J. (1996), ‘Issue ownership in presidential elections with a 1980 case study’, American Journal of Political Science 40(3): 825–850.Google Scholar
Pierson, P. (1996), ‘The new politics of the welfare state’, World Politics 48(02): 143–179.Google Scholar
Pierson, P. (ed.) (2001), The New Politics of the Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Przeworski, A., Stokes, S.C. and Manin, B. (eds) (1999), Democracy, Accountability, and Representation, New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Robertson, D. (1976), A Theory of Party Competition, London: Wiley.Google Scholar
Ross, F. (2000a), ‘Beyond left and right’: the new partisan politics of welfare’, Governance 13(2): 155–183.Google Scholar
Ross, F. (2000b), ‘Framing welfare reform in affluent societies: rendering restructuring more palatable?’, Journal of Public Policy 20(3): 169–193.Google Scholar
Rothstein, B., Samanni, M. and Teorell, J. (2012), ‘Explaining the welfare state: power resources vs. the quality of government’, European Political Science Review 4(1): 1–28.Google Scholar
Schmidt, M.G. (1996), ‘When parties matter: a review of the possibilities and limits of partisan influence on public policy’, European Journal of Political Research 30(2): 155–183.Google Scholar
Schmidt, M.G. (2010), ‘Parties’, in F.G. Castles, S. Leibfried, J. Lewis, H. Obinger and C. Pierson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 211–226.Google Scholar
Schmidt, V.A. (2002), ‘Does discourse matter in the politics of welfare state adjustment?’, Comparative Political Studies 35(2): 168–193.Google Scholar
Schmitt, H. and Thomassen, J. (eds) (1999), Political Representation and Legitimacy in the European Union, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Scruggs, L. (2006), ‘The generosity of social insurance, 1971–2002’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy 22(3): 349–364.Google Scholar
Scruggs, L., Jahn, D. and Kuitto, K. (2013), Comparative Welfare Entitlements Data Set 2. University of Connecticut and University of Greifswald.Google Scholar
Sigelman, L. (2004), ‘Avoidance or engagement? Issue convergence in U.S. presidential campaigns, 1960–2000’, American Journal of Political Science 48(4): 650–661.Google Scholar
Soroka, S.N. and Wlezien, C. (2010), Degrees of Democracy: Politics, Public Opinion, and Policy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Starke, P. (2008), Radical Welfare State Retrechment, Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan.Google Scholar
Stephens, J.D. (2010), ‘The social rights of citizenship’, in F.G. Castles, S. Leibfried, J. Lewis, H. Obinger and C. Pierson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 511–525.Google Scholar
Stephens, J.D. (2015), ‘Revisiting pierson’s work on the politics of welfare state reform in the era of retrenchment twenty years later’, PS: Political Science & Politics 2015(April): 274–278.Google Scholar
Stokes, D.E. (1963), ‘Spatial models of party competition’, American Political Science Review 57: 368–377.Google Scholar
Stokes, S.C. (2001), Mandates and Democracy: Neoliberalism by Surprise in Latin America, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Strömbäck, J. and Aalberg, T. (2008), ‘Election news coverage in democratic corporatist countries: a comparative study of Sweden and Norway’, Scandinavian Political Studies 31(1): 91–106.Google Scholar
Svallfors, S. (2013), ‘Government quality, egalitarianism, and attitudes to taxes and social spending: a European comparison’, European Political Science Review 5(3): 363–380.Google Scholar
Svensson, R., Dahlberg, S., Kumlin, S. and Rothstein, B. (2012), ‘The QoG Social Policy Dataset’, The Quality of Government Institute, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg.Google Scholar
Swank, D. (2002), Global Capital, Political Institutions, and Policy Change in Developed Welfare States, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
van Kersbergen, K. (1995), Social Capitalism: A Study of Christian Democracy and The Welfare State, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Vis, B. (2015), ‘Taking stock of the comparative literature on the role of blame avoidance strategies in social policy reform’, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, doi:10.1080/13876988.2015.1005955.Google Scholar
Warren, M. (1992), ‘Democratic theory and self-transformation’, American Political Science Review 86: 8–23.Google Scholar
Weaver, R.K. (1986), ‘The politics of blame avoidance’, Journal of Public Policy 6(4): 371–398.Google Scholar
Wenzelburger, G. (2014), ‘Blame avoidance, electoral punishment and the perceptions of risk’, Journal of European Social Policy 24(1): 80–91.Google Scholar
Wilensky, H. (1975), The Welfare State and Equality. Structural and Ideological Roots of Public Expenditures, Berkely, CA: University of California Press.Google Scholar