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Abstract: While government support is often a function of its economic record, this is not always the case. We look at the forces that lead some citizens to focus on economic issues while other citizens are more interested in foreign policy, corruption, social policy, or some other issue. Data compiled from 32 countries participating in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project demonstrate that while the economy is generally viewed as important, the economy's place on the issue agenda varies across individuals and also electoral contexts. If the economy is not perceived as important, its effect on government approval is strongly mitigated. Our data suggest that the economy is more likely to dominate other issue concerns when the economy is in a recession, in countries with volatile economies, if the citizen in unemployed, or if the citizen is economically vulnerable. Governance crises related to corruption and human rights reduce attention to the economy, though we do not find clear evidence that terrorist attacks or participation in wars do the same. Thus variations in the economy's salience need to be further incorporated into studies of economic voting. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explores how the difference in the implementation of economic policy can affect national welfare reform efforts in Denmark and Great Britain. Factors that influence business enterprises to participate in economic programs; Role of active labor market and social policy in the perpetuation of welfare regime programs; Difference of the programmatic designs of Danish and British active labor market plans.

It is now widely held that left governments in Europe have abandoned traditional Social Democratic policies in favour of a ‘third way’ of adulterated neo-liberalism. This paper assesses the extent to which this interpretation holds across the five largest West European states, and examines possible explanations for this putative rightwards drift, and the varying extent to which different parties have adopted a ‘third way’ discourse. Three types of explanations are considered: those that stress the role of international economic constraints, those that emphasise the changing electoral opportunity structures resulting from socio-economic change, and those that emphasise the changing organisational features of contemporary political parties. It is concluded that ideological change in Social Democratic parties can be usefully interpreted in terms of the ways in which socio-economic changes are filtered through the longstanding political cleavages which structure party competition in Western Europe. This perspective suggests that the historical importance of the religious cleavage is a key factor influencing Social Democratic parties’ willingness to embrace conservative economic policies as a response to economic and electoral constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]