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Did the financial and economic crisis (2008/2009) induce a permanent shift to more economic intervention in the advanced democracies? Three relevant theoretical perspectives are considered. First, the crisis could have led all governments to intervene more, irrespective of their partisan composition. Second, voter demand could have shifted towards more intervention due to the crisis, again inducing all governments to expand economic intervention. Third, increasing salience of economic issues could have led to an accentuation of partisan differences in economic policy which should have led to an expansion of economic intervention under left governments only. We present data from a new index of economic intervention, which show that governments increased economic intervention during the immediate crisis but returned to liberalization afterward. Similarly, statistical analyses show that partisan differences disappear during the acute crisis but return thereafter. Hence, the financial and economic crisis did not constitute a game‐changer in economic policymaking in advanced democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Did electoral competition shape the policies of the fourth Merkel government? We answer this question in five steps. First, we theoretically discuss under which conditions electoral competition affects public policies. Only in publicly salient issue areas in which opposition parties advocate credible alternatives and only if policy satisfaction influences voting intention will the government modify its policies. Next, we identify the two most salient issue areas, climate change and the Corona pandemic. Third, opposition parties offered credible alternatives, the Greens (and the Left) in climate policy and the FDP (and the AfD) regarding Corona management. Fourth, governing parties could not be certain to participate in the next government. Furthermore, voting intention for the Christian democrats as leading party of the government was related to policy success, while the Greens (and the Left) and the FDP (and the AfD) could benefit from dissatisfaction with climate change policy and Corona management, respectively. Finally, only regarding climate change did the government respond to electoral pressure by an increase in press releases, while communication about Corona was driven by voters' problem perception. These findings are corroborated by brief case studies of policy-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue first describes the cumbersome process of forming the fourth and final Merkel government. Both coalition partners experienced severe electoral losses in 2017 and were not particularly close to one another programmatically. This made the formation of a new coalition difficult. Next, the to-do-list is discussed. It turns out that, as a response to the Fridays-for-Future protests, voters considered climate change to be the most important problem in 2019, while the Corona pandemic dominated the agenda from early 2020. Interestingly, none of the coalition parties 'owned' either of these issues and this could have made policy-making even more intricate. In the third part, we summarise the policy profile of the fourth Merkel government, based mostly on the contributions to this special issue. It turns out that the policies of the fourth Merkel government mirrored those of its predecessor. In the socio-economic dimension a gentle de-liberalisation continued, while the policies on the social dimension followed a moderately liberal path. In the final section, the plan of the special issue is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of whether political parties make a systematic difference in terms of public policies is one of the classics of comparative public policy research. However, unstable class cleavages and changing party strategies challenge the assumptions of traditional partisan theory, namely that parties represent a stable group of voters and implement policies according to the preferences of this group. Against this backdrop, several recent studies have called for an "electoral turn" in partisan theory and suggest establishing a party–voter link on the microlevel, depending on the policy area at stake. In this article, we propose a different view on partisan effects. While we do not argue that public opinion is unimportant for parties, we maintain that the electoral turn literature has a tendency to black-box the political actors and their preferences, because they become mere agents of voter preferences. Our argument builds on a growing literature that shows that political actors both at the party member and the elite level do have preferences and that these may or may not be coherent with those of the voters. Hence, the effect of partisan ideology on public policies may also be situated on the level of the parties or policy-makers themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political parties are likely to hold differing views about employment protection legislation (EPL). While pro-welfare parties could support EPL, pro-market parties might focus on labour market deregulation. In this paper, we investigate empirically whether partisan politics, especially the government participation of Social democrats and Christian democrats, matter for EPL in 21 established OECD countries from 1985 to 2019. We show that during the golden age of the welfare state, the level of EPL was much higher where Social and Christian democrats dominated the government than elsewhere. After the golden age and under conditions of high unemployment, these unconditional effects mostly disappeared. Instead, the level of unemployment conditions partisan differences. Christian democrats liberalize EPL for regular employment significantly less than other parties under high levels of unemployment. In contrast, Social democrats defend high levels of EPL for regular and temporary employment when unemployment is low. Against expectations, they even liberalize employment protection for labour market insiders more than other parties at very high levels of unemployment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Classic partisan theory posits that political parties translate their electorates' preferences into policies. Accordingly, the recent changes in left parties' voter base, from predominantly working-class to middle-class voters, should have resulted in changing policy positions and policy effects of left parties. We test this expectation for economic policies (i.e., subsidies, product market regulation, and privatization) in 16 European countries between 1980 and 2012. We find the expected relationships for subsidies but not for regulation and privatization. This can be explained by the fact that only with regard to subsidies, preferences substantially differ between the working- and the middle-class. Thus, economic policy preferences of voters of left parties diverge less than could be expected. Methodologically, the study suggests that empirically testing the complete causal mechanism of classic partisan theory, assessing voters' preferences and investigating more than one issue area, are promising ways to study partisan effects on public policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present new evidence on whether political parties still matter in economic policy-making. We investigate four policy instruments (changes in product market regulation (PMR), subsidies, business taxation, social spending) in 21 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries between 1980 and 2015. We systematically consider how cabinet duration and the challenges of globalization, the European Union and economic problems (debt, unemployment, economic growth) condition partisan differences. Partisan differences only really make themselves felt after about one term in office. Moreover, with the exception of PMR, partisan differences tend to become more pronounced as globalization increases while European integration does not condition partisan effects. The conditioning effect of domestic economic problems on partisan differences depends on a policy instrument's salience. In highly salient issue areas (social expenditure, corporate taxation), we only find partisan differences when problems are low; in contrast, economic problems emphasize partisan differences in non-salient issue areas (PMR, subsidies). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses German politics, the third coalition formed by the cabinet of Angela Merkel of the political parties Social Democrats (SPD) and Christian Democrats (CDU and CSU). It also discusses the macroeconomic situation, growing economy, and declination of unemployment and soaring employment.

How did electoral competition during the second grand coalition under Chancellor Angela Merkel affect policy-making? By examining opinion polls and the outcomes of Länder elections, the article shows that on the demand side party competition was (potentially) intense. On the supply side, it discusses the major opposition parties' policy positions and reviews whether the voters regarded them as credible and competent. Then it assesses the effects of this actor constellation for the two most salient policy areas, the euro crisis and the refugee crisis. It finds that the grand coalition partially revoked its initially liberal migration policy as the AfD gained strength and became a credible alternative for CDU/CSU (as well as SPD) voters. In contrast, euro rescue policy was largely unaffected by party competition because the issue was less salient and the CDU/CSU was regarded as the most credible party in this respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While numerous indicators have been suggested in the scholarly literature on the determinants of privatization, they have mostly been treated as equivalents without much attention to how closely they are matched. This paper compares five prominent operationalizations of privatization. It finds that correlations between these indicators are worryingly low. Moreover, it shows that results of otherwise identical regressions differ immensely depending on which indicator of privatization is used. As a way forward, seeing the various indicators not as equivalents but as measuring different aspects of the phenomenon under study is suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses how institutions can be introduced into the Multiple Streams Framework. While the existing literature does not systematically integrate political institutions that structure the decision-making process into the Multiple Streams Framework, the article suggests distinguishing two coupling processes, one for agenda setting and one for decision making. During the latter coupling, the main issue is the adoption of proposals – and formal institutions play an important role here. Political entrepreneurs can ensure the adoption of their bills under conditions of institutional pluralism by conceding concessions, proposing package deals or manipulating the severity or salience of problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article applies a modified Multiple-Streams Approach (MSA) to the German Hartz IV labor market reform, probably the most far-reaching policy project since unification, which many theoretical approaches have substantial difficulties explaining. Empirically, the article provides the first encompassing explanation of the Hartz IV reform by putting together the empirical pieces of the overall puzzle. Theoretically, the article demonstrates that the extension of the MSA by Herweg, Huß, and Zohlnhöfer (HHZ) is fruitful regarding the adaptation of the MSA for decision making and regarding their hypotheses and operational definitions which allow a rigorous empirical analysis and provide the possibility to prove the MSA wrong. In contrast, HHZ's adaptation to parliamentary systems turn out to be less suitable for the case. Moreover, the point at which the political stream is considered to be ready for coupling needs reconsideration. It is argued that it suffices that some key political actors become interested in a proposal; in contrast, the necessary majorities for an adoption of the proposal need not be forthcoming already because these can still be organized during decision-coupling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the forum section on the Multiple Streams Framework (MSF) developed by John W. Kingdon argues that the conditions under which policy making takes place today increasingly resemble the assumptions upon which Kingdon built his lens. At the same time, while the framework is extremely successful with regard to citations and has been applied in various contexts that often differ remarkably from those for which the framework was originally developed, a systematic theoretical debate about the Multiple Streams Framework is still lacking. It is the intention to spark such a debate with this forum section. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article suggests theoretical refinements to the multiple streams framework (MSF) that make it applicable to parliamentary systems and the decision-making stage of the policy process. Regarding the former, the important role of political parties in parliamentary democracies is highlighted. Party policy experts are expected to be members of the policy communities in the policy stream and to promote viable policy alternatives in their respective parties, while the party leadership is concerned with adopting policies in the political stream. With regard to the latter, the introduction of a second coupling process to analyse decision making more rigorously is suggested. Moreover, the article provides operational definitions of the framework's key concepts when applied to parliamentary systems and derives a systematic set of falsifiable hypotheses for agenda-setting and decision making in these systems, thus addressing one of the main critiques against the MSF -- namely that no hypotheses can be derived from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding party competition as a ‘political market’, we explore its characteristics during the second Merkel government, 2009–13. On the demand side, analysing opinion polls and the Länder election results, we find that the outcome of the next Bundestag election was uncertain. Thus, electoral competition was likely to be intense. On the supply side, opposition parties presented credible alternatives to government policies with regard to social as well as environmental policy. Regarding the Euro crisis, however, a consensus across the established parties existed. Studying three of the most salient policy issues, we identify party competition as a crucial determinant of decision-making. While the debate on minimum wages was substantially shaped by party competition, resulting in ‘anticipatory obedience’, nuclear energy only became affected by electoral considerations after the ‘Fukushima shock’ which resulted in a major policy shift. Regarding the response to the Euro crisis, however, party competition was essentially suspended. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This introduction connects some of the main themes covered in this special issue on Chancellor Merkel's second coalition cabinet, which was formed in October 2009 and ended with the electoral collapse of the FDP in the Bundestag election of September 2013. It starts by setting out an interesting ‘puzzle’: the parties forming the coalition of 2009–2013 (CDU, CSU and FDP) had expressed a strong preference for this coalition in the run-up to the election of 2009. Despite their seeming agreement in many policy areas, the coalition formed in 2009 faced tough negotiations and conflicts between the parties from the beginning. The economic crisis the preceding government faced between 2005 and 2009 and unforeseen events during the course of the CDU/CSU–FDP coalition 2009–2013 (e.g. the Euro crisis and the Fukushima environmental disaster) had altered the policy agenda in important ways and rendered the former ‘Christian–Liberal reform project’ obsolete. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]