Over the past three decades, market reforms have transformed public services such as education, health, and care of the elderly. Whereas previous studies present markets as having similar and largely ...non-political effects, this book shows that political parties structure markets in diverse ways to achieve distinct political aims. Left-wing attempts to sustain the legitimacy of the welfare state are compared with right-wing wishes to limit the state and empower the private sector. Examining a broad range of countries, time periods, and policy areas, Jane R. Gingrich helps readers make sense of the complexity of market reforms in the industrialized world. The use of innovative multi-case studies and in-depth interviews with senior European policymakers enriches the debate and brings clarity to this multifaceted topic. Scholars and students working on the policymaking process in this central area will be interested in this new conceptualization of market reform.
How do citizens’ preferences over social policy shape their vote choice? In this article, I argue that the relationship between individuals’ values and voting behavior is powerfully conditioned by ...the informational structure of the welfare state. More visible welfare states provide citizens with greater information on social policy, allowing them to more easily connect these preferences to the political process. Where visibility is low, voters place less importance on social-policy issues in voting. I test this claim against data from 55 elections from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the 1996 and 2006 International Social Survey Program. I find compelling evidence that where welfare-state visibility is high, voters attach more weight to spatial distance from parties in voting, are more likely to see welfare related issues as important, are better able to place parties on a left-right spectrum, and have more consistent policy preferences.
The central political claim of Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism is that class actors, through the instruments of the democratic process, can modify capitalism. Where working-class mobilization is ...strong, left parties have sufficient electoral support in the political arena to alter markets politically in ways that decommodify and thereby empower workers. The decline of traditional class voting, however, has profoundly changed this dynamic of welfare politics. We show that the political support coalition for welfare states has been reconfigured through two processes. On the one hand, the Left may have lost support among the traditional working class, but it has substituted this decline by attracting substantial electoral support among specific parts of the expanding middle class. On the other hand, the welfare support coalition has been stabilized through increasing support for the welfare state among right-wing political parties. We discuss the possible consequences of this ‘middle-class shift’ in the welfare support coalition in terms of policy consequences.
This paper asks whether early responses to de-industrialization and automation shaped how those affected negatively by technological change responded politically. It begins by examining patterns of ...compensation, outlining cross-national differences in the use of passive early retirement benefits, the expansion of public services, and regulation of the labor market. It then pools 20 waves of the International Social Survey Programme, and examines party choices across groups of workers. It finds that those exposed to technological change are both more likely to vote for the mainstream left and right populists. Differences in compensation have a limited direct or indirect effect. Where spending and labor market regulation does matter, it heightens both left and right-populist voting among affected groups.
This article examines changing patterns of voting for parties on the left in the UK and Europe. It shows that while combined support for social‐democratic, left and Green parties remains strong, the ...composition of the left's electorate has radically changed. Increasingly, left parties rely on a coalition of new middle‐class voters and traditional and new working‐class constituencies. This coalition is relatively cohesive on questions of economic redistribution, but divided on social and cultural issues. Recent instability in Labour's electoral coalition reflects broader structural trends facing left parties across Europe.
Do policies that shape equality in schools have effects on the type of society and polity that the citizens educated in them want? This paper examines this question by analyzing variation in the ...English schooling experiences using the British Cohort Study and British Panel Study. It shows that the social environment of schooling affects adults’ attitudes to fairness and Conservative vote choice, but that policies targeting these social environments have weak effects. The paper theorizes that actual policy feedback in education is often limited, because the effects of policies on school experiences are mediated by the behaviors of other actors on the ground.
促进学校平等的政策是否会影响处于其中的受教育公民对社会和政体形态的期望？为探讨这一问题，本文使用英国的面板数据和队列研究来检验英国学校教育的差异。本文表明，学校教育的社会环境会强烈影响学生成年后对公平的态度和对保守党的投票选择，但针对社会环境的政策所带来的这方面影响却效果微弱。本文认为，教育中的实际政策反馈往往是有限的，因为政策对学校经历的影响并非一个简单直接的过程。
Ageing and Health Greer, Scott L; Lynch, Julia; Reeves, Aaron ...
2021, 2021-08-05, 2021-07-21
eBook
Open access
Ageing societies can be healthy and productive- if they get the politics right. This book argues that the population ageing crisis can be solved through policies that reduce inequalities between and ...within generations. It then explores the political coalitions needed to support policymaking that avoids pitting generations against each other.
Preferences in Context Gingrich, Jane; Ansell, Ben
Comparative political studies,
12/2012, Volume:
45, Issue:
12
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Political economists have increasingly looked to understand social welfare policy as a product of individual-level demand for social spending. This work hypothesizes that individuals with riskier ...jobs demand more social spending and that large welfare states emerge where there are more of such individuals. In this article we build on the “policy feedback” literature to argue that existing welfare institutions condition how individual-level factors affect social policy preferences. Specifically, we argue that institutions directly altering the risk of unemployment (employment protection legislation) and those that delink benefits from the labor market create a more uniform system of social risk that reduces the importance of individual-level risk in shaping policy preferences. We test these propositions using multilevel analysis of 19 advanced industrial countries in 2006. We find that individual risk matters for social policy preferences only where employment protection is low and welfare benefits are dependent on employment.
Do political parties approach education with different social policy aims? We argue that while parties have adopted a common language of equality as an aim of education, they draw on different ...conceptions of it linked to diverging social projects. To make this argument, we first normatively distinguish education as a tool for creating equal opportunity, equal outcomes, and representational diversity. We then draw on an original dataset coding the educational content in the political manifestos of the largest center‐left and center‐right party across 19 Western democracies from 1950 to present. The analysis shows that left parties emphasise more equality of outcome than rightwing parties and pay less attention to equality of opportunity, and that they associate equality‐related aims more extensively with promises of resources. These findings suggest that there remain critical differences in parties' understanding of education as a tool of social policy.
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