1. What drives partisan conflict and consensus on welfare state issues?
- Author
-
Laurenz Ennser-Jedenastik
- Subjects
political left ,Public Administration ,media_common.quotation_subject ,Politikwissenschaft ,party politics ,Sozialpolitik ,Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law ,Basic Research, General Concepts and History of Social Policy ,social policy ,redistribution ,European Values Study 2017: Integrated Dataset (EVS 2017) ,European Social Survey Round 4 Data (2008). Data file edition 4.5. [manifestos ,political parties ,ZA7500] ,Wohlfahrtsstaat ,Political science ,0502 economics and business ,050602 political science & public administration ,politische Linke ,Retrenchment ,Österreich ,050207 economics ,Parteipolitik ,politisches Programm ,Function (engineering) ,Political Process, Elections, Political Sociology, Political Culture ,Social sciences, sociology, anthropology ,media_common ,Social policy ,politische Rechte ,politische Willensbildung, politische Soziologie, politische Kultur ,Sozialwissenschaften, Soziologie ,political program ,05 social sciences ,Partei ,Welfare state ,political right ,Redistribution (cultural anthropology) ,Umverteilung ,0506 political science ,Political economy ,Austria ,Premise ,ddc:320 ,ddc:300 ,party ,Allgemeines, spezielle Theorien und Schulen, Methoden, Entwicklung und Geschichte der Sozialpolitik ,welfare state - Abstract
Left-right partisan conflict has been a key driver of welfare state expansion and retrenchment over time and across countries. Yet, we know very little about how left-right differences in party appeals vary across social policy domains. Why are some issues contentious while there is broad consensus on others? This paper starts from the simple premise that partisan conflict is a function of how popular a certain policy is. Based on this assumption, it argues that the left-right gap should be (1) larger for revenue-side issues than for expenditure-side issues, (2) larger for policies targeted at groups that are viewed as less deserving and (3) larger for more redistributive programs than less redistributive ones (e.g. means-tested versus earnings-related benefits). These expectations are tested on fine-grained policy data coded from 65 Austrian party manifestos issued between 1970 and 2017 (N = 18,219). The analysis strongly supports the revenue–expenditure hypothesis and the deservingness hypothesis, but not the redistribution hypothesis.
- Published
- 2020