One of the most striking developments in the discipline of political science today is the extent to which the research on democratic politics and performance and the literature on political economy are at odds with each other. On the one hand, political scientists have managed to accumulate an impressive array of knowledge and models on political participation, the formation of voter attitudes, electoral behavior, and partisan competitive strategies that provides very powerful insights on the workings of modern mass democracies. On the other hand, however, political economists have downplayed the significance of voter preferences and partisan programs to explain policies and economic outcomes. Until the early 1980s, corporatism, that is, the continuous bargaining among organized economic interests, was offered as the paradigm of how politics was (or ought to be) conducted in most parts of the advanced industrial world. Several scholars then turned to the analysis of the state and its political institutions to account for the notoriously different levels of inflation and budget deficits that the OECD countries experienced in the aftermath of several consecutive oil shocks. Today many have decided that globalization and economic interdependence are finally washing out any differences that may remain among nations. What all these research agendas have in common, however, is the rather tangential role they have ascribed to electoral politics and the impact of partisanship.

This study does not try to overturn all these explanations. Domestic institutions and the various constraints imposed by the international economy are clearly needed to understand the different political–economic equilibria that characterize advanced countries.