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Political Scientists have been explicitly concerned with the role of decision-making institutions in policymaking since the beginning of modern political science, if not earlier. Contemporary formal approaches such as the social choice based analyses of Tsebelis's Veto Players theory (2002) have formed the foundation of a good deal of comparative political research on crossnational policy changes. This paper shows that the static assumptions that underlie these analyses drive a number of the most important conclusions of these arguments. When models such as Veto Players are put in motion the resulting conclusions about policy dynamics become more ambiguous. This finding helps to explain why these arguments have been so difficult to square with empirical reality across contexts, suggests a possible explanation for divergence from the standard veto players arguments, and points to simulation based theoretical exercise aimed at specifying the circumstances where the conclusions based on static analyses hold and where they fail. The paper concludes with the observation that while static analysis is excellent for demonstrating how institutions work in any one circumstance, they are more limited in explaining what institutions do to policy changes across different dynamic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Recent scholarship in comparative political economy has emphasized the importance of divergent equilibria for political-economic outcomes such as wage inequality and the extent of the welfare state. While studies have explored the development and maintenance of these "varieties of capitalism," few if any of these explicitly link these institutional structures to the incentives and preferences of those whose consistent support is necessary for these institutions to function: political parties. Addressing this lacuna, we argue that as larger blocs of voters have a stake in pro-welfare collective bargaining agreements, vote-seeking major right parties will have a strategic incentive to be less traditionally "right" on issues that are of specific importance to collective bargainers. Consequently, we hypothesize that party platforms should converge on issues of concern to social partners. In essence this forms a political equilibrium reinforcing the institutional equilibria identified in the 'varieties of capitalism'. We test our claims using party positioning and welfare state data in an equilibrium framework. Besides shedding light on a key ingredient to the stability of coordinated market regimes, our results also provide an alternative explanation for a number of confusing findings in studies of comparative political economy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: National politicians prefer to see more state governments that are of the same party as themselves. Both for policy and electoral reasons, there exist incentives for these politicians to delegate authority to the party organization in order to share credit with friendly state governments and deny credit to unfriendly state governments for federal expenditure. As such, when national politicians are most able to do so, such as in periods of unified government, we hypothesize that we should see the distribution of federal outlays to the states shift as a function of which party controls the state government. Unfriendly state governments should receive less federal money than divided state governments, and unified, friendly state governments more than divided state governments. Using data from the period 1972 - 2002 we find some evidence for these claims. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a model linking the institutional-strategic enviroment to the weight voters give to the issue dimension of the public provision of societal well-being when making their vote choice, explaining the diversity and dynamics of welfare states. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current thinking in comparative political economy emphasizes the importance of deriving the way different capitalisms have maintained divergent equilibrium institutions in the face of the economic pressures of globalization. However, the few studies emphasizing these issues do not place much stock in the political system as a player in maintaining that equilibrium. In contrast, recent work by Sieberg and Zicha (2005) models the dynamics and qualities of the equilibrium in coordinated market economies as that of a barter economy between social partners (labor and employer federations) arbitrated by a ‘neutral’ government. This paper develops and tests the plausibility of the assumption that governments in economies characterized by extensive union coverage and employer federation coverage will have parties that are more amendable to the issues of concern to those participating in collective bargains. I hypothesize that as larger blocs of voters have a stake in pro-welfare collective bargaining agreements, vote-seeking major right parties will become less traditionally ‘right’ on dimensions that are specifically at issue to collective bargainers and spreads between the manifesto positions of right and left parties on issues of concern to social partners with narrow. As such, we would expect that parties, when in government, will behave more ‘neutrally’ with regards to collective agreements. Besides shedding light on a key ingredient to the stability of coordinated market regimes, such a result also provides an alternative explanation for a number of confusing findings in studies of the comparative political economy of the welfare state and inequality. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]