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A core, but so far untested, proposition of the new politics perspective, originally introduced by Paul Pierson, is that welfare state cutbacks will be implemented using so-called 'invisible' policy instruments, for example, a change in indexation rules. Expansion should, by implication, mainly happen using 'visible' policy instruments, for example, a change in nominal benefits. We have coded 1030 legislative reforms of old-age pensions and unemployment protection in Britain, Denmark, Finland and Germany from 1974 to 2014. With this unique data at hand, we find substantial support for this crucial new politics proposition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the ill-fated political experience with the Third Way, one would not expect social democratic parties that return to ofice after long opposition spells to take up again the liberal, supply-side oriented policies that were so typical for the Third Way. A case study of Denmark, however, shows that that is precisely what happens and that it has the same disastrous electoral consequences. Taking a comparative perspective and learning from the Danish experience, we conclude that other future social democratic governments are likely to pursue many elements of the updated Third Way we found in the Danish case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent elections yielded sweeping majorities for the centre-right in Scandinavia with a decade of pure centre-right majorities in Denmark and the longest sitting centre-right coalition in Sweden for decades. This is a blind spot in the issue voting literature, which would not expect centre-right parties to flourish in contexts where welfare issues have a natural salience as in the case of universal welfare states. In contrast, Scandinavian universal welfare states ought to benefit social democracy when it comes to issue voting on welfare issues. It is argued in this article that centre-right parties can beat social democrats by credibly converging to its social democratic opponent on issues of universal welfare. Issue ownership voting to the benefit of centre-right parties will then be strongest among voters perceiving the centre-right to have converged to social democracy and perceiving the centre-right as issue-owner. Using Danish National Election Studies, 1998-2007, the article shows that the Danish Liberal Party outperformed the Social Democrats on traditional welfare issues among those voters perceiving the Liberals to be ideologically close to the social democrats. The findings help us to understand why centre-right parties have recently turned into serious competitors on social democracy's turf: the universal welfare state. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]