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Political economy arguments on party behaviour usually address parties of the left and the right. This article introduces a novel argument that portrays house price changes as an economic signal that right‐wing parties disproportionately respond to in their programmatic positioning. This asymmetric partisanship effect is driven by homeowners' importance for right‐wing parties as a core voter group. Increasing house prices improve homeowners' economic prospects. Right‐wing parties thus have some flexibility to reach out to undecided voters by targeting the centre of the political spectrum. Falling house prices, however, signal worsening economic outlooks for homeowners. Right‐wing parties thus have a strong incentive to send out signals of reassurance and prioritise their core voters. For a sample of Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries from 1970 to 2014, the findings support this argument. Right‐wing parties move programmatically leftwards with booming house prices and rightwards when house prices fall, while parties of the left do not respond systematically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a country comparative case based methodology that combines the methods of Cluster Analysis and Qualitative Comparative Analysis, this article examines whether there is any quantitative evidence that countries which are members of the euro currency have experienced a convergence of the outputs and outcome of the European welfare state for euro member countries. The analysis concludes there is little evidence of a holistic euro based convergence of either welfare outputs or outcome. It is argued that outputs such as full employment, equity of health care provision, poverty reduction and educational attainment might reasonably be expected to converge in the longer term, but only if the euro crisis results in a much more planned and coordinated interventionist policy approach to the macro political economy. An outcome, however, such as subjective well-being, is potentially influenced by other historical and cultural factors and is only partially determined by macro political economic policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]