Why do some European welfare states protect unemployed and inadequately employed workers ("outsiders") from economic uncertainty better than others? Philip Rathgeb's study of labor market policy ...change in three somewhat-similar small states-Austria, Denmark, and Sweden-explores this fundamental question. He does so by examining the distribution of power between trade unions and political parties, attempting to bridge these two lines of research-trade unions and party politics-that, with few exceptions, have advanced without a mutual exchange.
Inclusive trade unions have high political stakes in the protection of outsiders, because they incorporate workers at risk of unemployment into their representational outlook. Yet, the impact of union preferences has declined over time, with a shift in the balance of class power from labor to capital across the Western world. National governments have accordingly prioritized flexibility for employers over the social protection of outsiders. As a result, organized labor can only protect outsiders when governments are reliant on union consent for successful consensus mobilization. When governments have a united majority of seats, on the other hand, they are strong enough to exclude unions.Strong Governments, Precarious Workerscalls into question the electoral responsiveness of national governments-and thus political parties-to the social needs of an increasingly numerous group of precarious workers. In the end, Rathgeb concludes that the weaker the government, the stronger the capacity of organized labor to enhance the social protection of precarious workers.
What kind of welfare state do voters of populist radical right parties (PRRPs) want and how do their preferences differ from voters of mainstream left- and right-wing parties? In this paper, we draw ...on an original, representative survey of public opinion on education and related social policies in eight Western European countries to measure (1) support for social transfers, (2) support for workfare and (3) support for social investment. Challenging the view that PRRPs turned into pro-welfare parties, our results indicate that their voters want a particularistic-authoritarian welfare state, displaying moderate support only for 'deserving' benefit recipients (e.g. the elderly), while revealing strong support for a workfare approach and little support for social investment. These findings have important implications for contemporary debates about the future of capitalism and the welfare state.
Recent studies hold that populist radical right parties have shifted towards a leftist socio-economic position in response to growing working-class support. Based on an analysis of policy choices in ...government, the present article examines this 'pro-welfare view' through a case study analysis of the Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ). Yet, despite the 'proletarisation' of its electoral support base, the FPÖ's pro-welfare impact is restricted to the mitigation of welfare retrenchment for the core workforce, whereas the party has been a protagonist of tax cuts, trade union disempowerment and, more recently, welfare chauvinism. This policy impact can be attributed to a producerist ideology arguing that tax-paying 'makers' (employees, employers) need to be liberated from the economic burden imposed by self-serving 'takers' (immigrants, 'corrupt elite'). The article concludes with conceptual and theoretical implications for the political economy of the populist radical right.
Abstract
The marginalization of trade unions was a notable feature of the sovereign debt crisis in the Eurozone periphery. However, governments have recently imposed liberalizing reforms against ...union protests in the Eurozone core too. We argue that organized labour loses influence across the core-periphery divide because the ‘new economic governance’ puts national governments under enhanced pressure to compete against each other on wage and labour market flexibility—a process known as competitive internal devaluation. The article illustrates this argument through comparative quantitative indicators of liberalization and qualitative process-tracing in three core countries. Whereas Germany’s outstanding competitiveness position allowed its unions to extract significant concessions, their counterparts in France and Finland faced unprecedented defeats from governments aiming to restore economic growth by closing down the competitiveness gap to Germany. Our findings highlight the class power implications of the Eurozone’s reliance on the labour market as the main economic adjustment variable.
Attempting to reconcile the diverse immigration policy demands of the 'old' working class and the 'new' middle class, social democratic parties struggle to take a clear position on immigration ...policy. Adopting more restrictive policies is a possible way forward, but this is likely to lead to electorally costly intra-party conflict. This article illuminates the conditions under which social democratic parties can unite behind more restrictive immigration policies and promote them consistently. Employing a most-similar systems design, it presents a comparative case study of the Austrian and Danish social democrats, from the 2015 'refugee crisis' to 2020. The article argues that low levels of territorial decentralisation enabled the Danish social democrats to promote a restrictive stance on immigration top-down, while the Austrian social democrats' federal party structure exacerbated internal disagreements between urban and rural leaders. These findings highlight the importance of internal party characteristics in explaining how parties respond to strategic trade-offs.
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1975211 .
This review article and special issue introduction argues that studying the relationship between the populist radical right and the welfare state requires bridging literatures that have so far ...advanced with little mutual engagement: party politics and voting behaviour research on the one hand, and comparative political economy and welfare state research on the other. In this way, the article highlights the advantages of connecting different academic sub-fields in studying radical right politics. First, the literature of comparative political economy on the multi-dimensionality of welfare politics can contribute to a clearer understanding of both the welfare-related causes and consequences of radical right support. Second, the party politics literature on the radical right's ideology provides theoretical tools to explain the welfare-related consequences of populist radical right parties. The article illustrates the advantages of bridging these literatures through the empirical contributions in this special issue and concludes with avenues of future research.
Some European welfare states protect outsiders from economic uncertainty better than others. Conventional theories attribute this either to the material interests of producer groups or the ...vote-seeking actions of political parties. By contrast, this article focuses on the interaction between trade unions and governments, drawing on empirical experience in Austria and Sweden. High levels of inclusiveness provide trade unions with a powerful interest in protecting outsiders. Governments, however, have moved towards dualistic policy choices, but when weakened by intra-coalitional divisions or a hung parliament, they retain a political incentive to negotiate political deals with trade unions, and this forces them to compensate outsiders for economic uncertainty.
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