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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]

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]

Dismantling the Welfare State? is a modern classic in the welfare state literature. Yet although the book is widely known, the 'Piersonian argument' as it is typically referred to today bears limited resemblance to the book's highly nuanced and thought-provoking ideas. This review revisits the book and explores some of the lessons it still holds for the research community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Negativity bias suggests that the attribution of blame to governments, for alleged or actual policy failures, is disproportionately pertinent for their popularity. However, when citizens attribute blame for adverse consequences of a policy, does it make a difference which policy was it, and who was the political agent that adopted the policy? We posit that the level of blame citizens attribute to political agents for policy failures depends on three policy-oriented considerations: (1) the distance between a citizen's ideal policy and the agent's established policy position; (2) the distance between a citizen's ideal policy and the agent's concrete policy choice; and (3) the distance between the agent's established policy position and her concrete policy choice. The inherent relationship between these three policy-oriented considerations renders their integration in one model a theoretical and methodological imperative. The model provides novel observable predictions regarding the conditions under which each of the three policy-oriented factors will produce either pronounced or subtle observable effects on blame attribution. We test the model's predictions in two survey experiments, in Israel and in Germany. The results of both experiments are highly consistent with the model's predictions. These finding offer an important contribution by specifying the ways in which individual-level preferences interact with politicians' policy reputations and policy choices to shape blame attribution. Our model entails unintuitive revisions to several strands of the literature, and in the "Discussion" section we provide tentative support for the applicability of this model to other political judgments beyond blame attribution. [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 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]

By employing multiple regression analysis, the article identifies the social, economic and political determinants of overall private education expenditure and private spending on tertiary education in 26 OECD countries, testing hypotheses derived from theories of comparative public policy. We find that overall private education expenditure is higher in federal countries and under Conservative parties in government, while it is lower where voters prefer state-centred solutions, where Catholicism is strong and where a Church tax exists. Analysing private expenses for tertiary education only, these findings reappear with one exception: the size of the student population, which is without substantive effect on general private education expenditure, yields the largest single effect in the tertiary sector. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents a model of the decision-making process that can help to understand the politics of policy change and stability. The model takes as a starting point veto players. Since these actors are mostly political parties in Western democracies, their preferences can be modelled as policy seeking and vote maximization. Thus, governing parties try to adopt certain policies which differ according to their partisan orientation. The adoption of policies may, however, be impeded by electoral considerations unless the government is confronted with economic problems that put its re-election at risk. In addition, the existence of further veto players can make the adoption of reforms difficult. Policy change comes about if at least one element of the veto player constellation changes or if an external shock occurs. Both of these mechanisms are discussed in more detail, taking a change in the partisan complexion of government and globalization as examples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]