Civic associations are expected to foster civic, pro-social behavior, but this optimistic view is increasingly contested. We argue that populist radical right parties can strategically target and infiltrate associations to diffuse anti-establishment rhetoric and anti-democratic attitudes. We illustrate this phenomenon by examining the relationship between civic associations and compliance with government rules during Germany's first Covid-19 lockdown with a difference-in-differences design. Results show that areas with denser sport, nature, and culture clubs recorded higher mobility under lockdown. We document the infiltration mechanism and the spreading of anti-democratic attitudes within associations, using survey and election data and qualitative evidence including interviews. In doing so, we shed light on a negative effect of social networks and an understudied strategy of challenger populist parties.

Technological change often increases demand for high-skilled jobs, with low-skilled losers turning to the populist right in response. The political effects of technological change that increases demand for low-skilled workers are largely unknown. The growth of the salmon fish-farming industry in rural Norway improved the labor-market situation for low-skilled workers, and we find that support for the populist right-wing party increased in municipalities that benefitted from the industry growth. The electoral change is due to a right-wing shift on the economic, but not the cultural dimension. Our results support political economy frameworks that point to lower demand for state interventions after positive labor market shocks, but raise the question of in what contexts support for populism will decline.

Economic development and accompanying structural changes of the economy create new opportunities, however not everywhere and not for everyone. Development increases the demand for skilled labor, improving their welfare perceptions, but low-skilled workers feel more insecure and worse off economically. This adverse effect results from a mismatch between local labor demand and individual skill sets. To measure the development levels of people's local environments, I combine geocoded Afrobarometer data and night lights. Bayesian multilevel analysis confirms that the highly skilled are economically most dissatisfied in lagging areas, while the low-skilled are less satisfied in highly developed environments. These findings emphasize the importance of local conditions for welfare perceptions and show the unequal effect of development leaving behind large parts of the population.

Liberalization is a perennial topic in politics and political science. We first review a broad scholarly debate, showing that the mainstream theories make rival and contradictory claims regarding the role of political parties in (de)liberalization reforms. We then develop a framework of conditional partisan influence, arguing that and under what conditions parties matter. We test our (and rival) propositions with a new dataset on (de)liberalization reforms in 23 democracies since 1973 covering several policy areas. Methodologically, we argue that existing quantitative studies are problematic: They rely on time-series cross-section models using country-year observations; but governments do not change annually, so that the number of observations is artificially inflated, resulting in incorrect estimates. We propose mixed-effects models instead, with country-year observations nested in cabinets, which are nested in countries and years. The results show under what conditions parties matter for (de)liberalization. More generally, the paper argues that mixed-effects models should become the new standard for studying partisan influences.

The EU's Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) represents a bold integrationist step in European economic governance. Besides the size of the fiscal envelope, the novelty also lies in the new governance. Member states prepare integrated investment and reform plans and need to fulfil milestones and targets to access funding. This article assesses the balance of power in negotiating the plans and the effect on domestic policymaking. Based on five case studies, we show that the RRF has enhanced the steering capacity of the European Commission on reforms and investments, while member states remain ultimately in charge of the plans. Second, we argue that, while the RRF enhances the efficiency of the policymaking process and allows the fast-forwarding of reforms, it has also led to a contractualization of the relationship with the EU and a centralization of decision-making processes within member states. This latter aspect may hamper ownership and legitimacy in policy implementation.

Why do high-income earners support higher levels of income redistribution in some countries than in others? I argue that differences in the social insurance design have consequences for fairness considerations and that this matters for preference formation. Flat-rate systems provide social benefits in equal amounts to everyone in need, while earnings-related systems provide benefits in relation to previous earnings. In the case of income loss, earnings-related systems maintain unfair income differences, while flat-rate systems equalize unfair income differences between the rich and the poor. Cross-national patterns reveal that support for redistribution among the rich is higher in income-maintaining welfare states. For a strict test of my fairness argument, I conduct a laboratory experiment and show that participants reduce inequality more if given endowment differences are maintained in the case of loss.

Do existing theories regarding the impact of foreign migration explain preferences in non-oecd countries? The author adapts and applies explanations for opposition to migration in the Arabian Gulf, a significant region in global migration today, using a survey experiment implemented in Qatar. The results offer a rare validation of predictions from the labor market competition model, demonstrating that individual employment circumstances are important preference determinants. Additionally, while OECD citizens prefer high-skilled migrants, Qataris are indifferent about blue- versus white-collar workers. Mediation analysis suggests that this null effect is the result of competing cultural and economic concerns over the effect of differing classes of migrants on economic and social welfare. The novel context provides a critical test case of the labor market hypothesis and offers insight into how migration preferences in the Global South differ from the Western experience.

How does trade openness affect individuals’ social policy preferences in emerging markets? Drawing upon the theories of economic openness, risk, and social policy preference, we examine how trade openness and job sectors jointly shape preferences on social protection in China, the largest emerging market. Using the World Value Survey (WVS) Wave VI and archival macroeconomic indicators in 2012, we find that trade openness is associated with higher demands for government responsibility in social protection. We also find, compared with public-sector employees, private-sector employees exhibit lower levels of support to the role of government in social protection. The public–private divide in policy preferences, nevertheless, diminishes in regions with high levels of trade openness. This research provides new evidence to the risk-model of social policy preferences in the Chinese context. It also highlights the importance of considering the significant differences between public and private-sector employees in their social policy preferences.

Even though social investment is highly popular, welfare state recalibration remains an uphill battle. When resources are scarce in times of austerity, welfare recalibration involves multidimensional trade-offs. Existing research primarily studied preferences toward individual policies or trade-offs in specific policy fields, failing to capture citizens’ overall social policy priorities. Using two novel survey experiments in three European countries, we show that citizens have clear social policy priorities: pensions and education enjoy a high, family policies a medium, and labor market policies a low priority. However, policy constituencies differ in their relative priorities. Our findings suggest that welfare state recalibration is difficult because trade-offs are unpopular, and distributive conflicts in mature welfare states are mainly about distributing resources to specific social groups.

A central challenge in understanding public opinion shifts is identifying whose opinions change. Political economists try to uncover this by exploring voters’ economic vulnerability, particularly the relationship between labor-market risk and redistribution preferences. Predominantly, however, such work imputes risk from occupational or sectoral characteristics. Due to within-occupational inequality in exposure to risk, considerable variation remains unexplored. I propose an individual-level, dynamic account of risk inferred from job tenure, contract type, and expectations of job security. These aspects, importantly, account for individual variation in risk and the possibility that one's experience of risk may change across time. The results indicate the usefulness of this approach to risk in understanding changes in social spending preferences.

A robust economy is assumed to bolster leaders' standing. This ignores how benefits of growth are distributed. Extending the partisan models of economic voting, we theorize executives are more likely rewarded when gains from growth go to their constituents. Analyses of presidential approval in 18 Latin American countries support our pro-constituency model of accountability. When economic inequality is high, growth concentrates among the rich, and approval of right-of-center presidents is higher. Leftist presidents benefit from growth when gains are more equally distributed. Further analyses show growth and inequality inform perceptions of personal finances differently based on wealth, providing a micro-mechanism behind the aggregate findings. Study results imply that the economy is not purely a valence issue, but also a position issue.

Foreign students are one of the most significant immigrant categories in many North American and Western European countries. Yet, as their numbers have swelled, many governments have experienced increasing pressures to cap their entry. This is true despite the sizable benefits that foreign students bring to host countries, and despite standard political economy concerns about immigrants—that they take away jobs or abuse public entitlements—not applying to foreign students. We field a nationally-representative survey experiment in the UK, one of the top destinations for foreign students, to examine potential activators of public support for capping the number of foreign students. Results show that support for caps is most activated when citizens are primed to think about foreign students competing with domestic students for scarce admissions slots at universities.

Why did historical anti-poverty programs in Britain, Denmark and France differ so dramatically in their goals, beneficiaries and agents for addressing poverty? Different cultural views of poverty contributed to how policy makers envisioned anti-poverty reforms. Danish elites articulated social investments in peasants as necessary to economic growth, political stability and societal strength. British elites viewed the lower classes as a challenge to these goals. The French perceived the poor as an opportunity for Christian charity. Fiction writers are overlooked political agents who engage in policy struggles. Collectively, writers contribute to a country's distinctive ‘cultural constraint’, or symbols and narratives, which appears in the national-level aggregation of literature. To assess cross-national variations in cultural depictions of poverty, this article uses historical case studies and quantitative textual analyses of 562 British, 521 Danish and 498 French fictional works from 1770 to 1920.

What is the relationship between debt and the welfare state? Recent arguments suggest that credit markets fill gaps left by limited social benefits but often rest on thin empirical grounds. This article makes two contributions to this debate by using micro-level panel data and leveraging variation in welfare state generosity across US states and over time. First, it shows that households that experience unemployment borrow significantly more in states where unemployment benefits are low compared to states where benefits are high. A 10-percentage-point decrease in unemployment replacement rates increases debt levels by about 30 per cent, or $5,300. Secondly, the article documents that rising indebtedness in the context of weak social policies has political consequences and increases support for a stronger safety net. One explanation is that voters seek social protection against downstream debt-induced economic risks. These findings suggest that welfare states can play a critical role in mitigating growing indebtedness.