Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-vdxz6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T23:09:11.912Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Risky Business? Welfare State Reforms and Government Support in Britain and Denmark

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2017

Abstract

Are welfare state reforms electorally dangerous for governments? Political scientists have only recently begun to study this seemingly simple question, and existing work still suffers from two shortcomings. First, it has never tested the reform–vote link with data on actual legislative decisions for enough points in time to allow robust statistical tests. Secondly, it has failed to take into account the many expansionary reforms that have occurred in recent decades. Expansions often happen in the same years as cutbacks. By focusing only on cutbacks, estimates of the effects of reforms on government popularity become biased. This article addresses both shortcomings. The results show that voters punish governments for cutbacks, but also reward them for expansions, making so-called compensation, a viable blame-avoidance strategy. The study also finds that the size of punishments and rewards is roughly the same, suggesting that voters’ well-documented negativity bias does not directly translate into electoral behavior.

Type
Articles
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Department of Political Science, Aarhus University (emails: [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]); Department of Social Sciences, TU Kaiserslautern (email: [email protected]). We want to thank the editor and three reviewers for excellent and very thorough comments. An early version of the article was presented in the Section of Behavior and Institutions at the Department of Political Science at Aarhus University, as well as at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association in Chicago. We are grateful for the many critical and thoughtful comments we got on those occasions. Lasse Leipziger and Kristian Nicolaisen provided first-class research assistance. The research has been funded by The Danish Council for Independent Research (grant no. 4003-00013). Replication data sets are available in Harvard Dataverse at: https://dx.doi.org/10.7910/DVN/FDY0ZN and online appendices are available at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123417000382.

References

Aardal, Bernt, and Pieter, van Wijnen. 2005. Issue Voting, In The European Voter. A Comparative Study of Modern Democracies , edited by Jacques Thomassen 192212. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Amable, B., Gatti, D., and Schumacher, J. 2006. Welfare-State Retrenchment: The Partisan Effect Revisited. Oxford Review of Economic Policy 22 (3):426444.Google Scholar
Armingeon, Klaus, and Giger, Nathalie. 2008. Conditional Punishment: A Comparative Analysis of the Electoral Consequences of Welfare State Retrenchment in OECD Nations, 1980–2003. West European Politics 31 (3):558580.10.1080/01402380801939834Google Scholar
Arndt, Christoph. 2013. The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms: Social Democracy’s Transformation and its Political Costs. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar
Arndt, Christoph. 2016. Public Policy-Making and Risk Profiles: The Scandinavian Centre-Right in Power after the Turn of the Millennium. OnlineFirst European Political Science Review.10.1017/S1755773916000072Google Scholar
Bawn, K., and Rosenbluth, F.. 2006. Short versus Long Coalitions: Electoral Accountability and the Size of the Public Sector. American Journal of Political Science 50 (2):251265.10.1111/j.1540-5907.2006.00182.xGoogle Scholar
Clasen, Jochen, and Clegg, Daniel. 2007. Levels and Levers of Conditionality: Measuring Change Within Welfare States. In Investigating Welfare State Change: The ‘Dependent Variable Problem’ in Comparative Analysis, edited by J. Clasen and N. Siegel, 166197. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.Google Scholar
Davidsson, Johan Bo, and Marx, Paul. 2013. Losing the Issue, Losing the Vote: Issue Competition and the Reform of Unemployment Insurance in Germany and Sweden. Political Studies 61 (3):505522.Google Scholar
Elmelund-Præstekær, C., and Emmenegger, P.. 2013. Strategic Re-framing as a Vote Winner: Why Vote-seeking Governments Pursue Unpopular Reforms. Scandinavian Political Studies 36 (1):2342.10.1111/j.1467-9477.2012.00295.xGoogle Scholar
Elmelund-Præstekær, C., Klitgaard, M. B., and Schumacher, G.. 2015. What Wins Public Support? Communicating or Obfuscating Welfare State Retrenchment. European Political Science Review 7 (3):427450.Google Scholar
Giger, Nathalie. 2011. The Risk of Social Policy? The Electoral Consequences of Welfare State Retrenchment and Social Policy Performance in OECD Countries. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Giger, Nathalie, and Nelson, Moira. 2011. The Electoral Consequences of Welfare State Retrenchment: Blame Avoidance or Credit Claiming in the Era of Permanent Austerity? European Journal of Political Research 50 (1):123.Google Scholar
Giger, Nathalie, and Nelson, Moira. 2013. The Welfare State or the Economy? Preferences, Constituencies, and Strategies for Retrenchment. European Sociological Review 29 (5):10831094.Google Scholar
Green-Pedersen, C. 2004. The Dependent Variable Problem within the Study of Welfare State Retrenchment: Defining the Problem and Looking for Solutions. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 6 (1):314.10.1080/1387698042000222763Google Scholar
Hinterleitner, M. 2017. Reconciling Perspectives on Blame Avoidance Behaviour. Political Studies Review 15 (2):243254.Google Scholar
Jensen, Carsten. 2014. The Right and the Welfare State. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Jensen, C., and Mortensen, P. B.. 2014. Government Responses to Fiscal Austerity: The Effect of Institutional Fragmentation and Partisanship. Comparative Political Studies 47 (2):143170.10.1177/0010414013488536Google Scholar
Jensen, C., Arndt, C., Lee, S., and Wenzelburger, G.. 2017. Policy Instruments and Welfare State Reform. Journal of European Social Policy. Forthcoming.Google Scholar
Jensen, C., and Petersen, M. B.. 2017. The Deservingness Heuristic and the Politics of Health Care. American Journal of Political Science 61 (1):6883.10.1111/ajps.12251Google Scholar
Jæger, Mads Meier. 2011. Do We All (Dis)like the Same Welfare State? Configurations of Public Support for the Welfare State in Comparative Perspective. In Changing Social Inequality: The Nordic Model in the 21st Century, edited by J. Kvist, J. Fritzell, B. Hvinden and O. Kangas, 4568. Bristol: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Keele, L., and Kelly, N. J.. 2006. Dynamic Models for Dynamic Theories: The Ins and Outs of Lagged Dependent Variables. Political Analysis 14 (2):186205.Google Scholar
Korpi, W., and Palme, J.. 2003. New Politics and Class Politics in the Context of Austerity and Globalization: Welfare State Regress in 18 Countries, 1975–95. American Political Science Review 97 (3):425446.Google Scholar
Lee, Seonghui, Carsten Jensen, Christoph Arndt, and Georg Wenzelburger. 2017. “Replication Data for: Risky business? Welfare state reforms and government support in Britain and Denmark”, https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.7910/DVN/FDY0ZN, Harvard Dataverse, V1, UNF:6:0zOGbVhn0/d21aoaa125Kw= =.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, M., and Stegmaier, M.. 2000. Economic Determinants of Electoral Outcomes. Annual Review of Political Science 3:183219.Google Scholar
Lewis-Beck, M. S., Nadeau, R., and Bélanger, E.. 2004. General Election Forecasts in the United Kingdom: A Political Economy Model. Electoral Studies 23 (2):279290.Google Scholar
Lijphart, A. 1999. Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Democracies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Lindbom, Anders. 2014. Waking up the Giant? Hospital Closures and Electoral Punishment in Sweden. In How Welfare States Shape the Democratic Public: Policy Feedback, Participation, Voting and Attitudes, edited by Staffan Kumlin and Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen, 156177. Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar Publishing.Google Scholar
Nannestad, P., and Paldam, M.. 1994. The VP-Function: A Survey of the Literature on Vote and Popularity Functions after 25 Years. Public Choice 79 (3–4):213245.10.1007/BF01047771Google Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 1994. Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pierson, Paul. 1996. The New Politics of the Welfare State. World Politics 48 (2):143179.Google Scholar
Rozin, P., and Royzman, E. B.. 2001. Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology Review 5 (4):296320.Google Scholar
Sanders, D. 2005. The Political Economy of UK Party Support, 1997–2004: Forecasts for the 2005 General Election. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties 15 (1):4771.Google Scholar
Schumacher, Gijs, Vis, Barbara, and Kersbergen, Kees van. 2013. Political Parties’ Welfare Image, Electoral Punishment and Welfare State Retrenchment. Comparative European Politics 11 (1):121.Google Scholar
Scruggs, Lyle, Detlef, Jahn, and Kuitto, Kati. 2014. Comparative Welfare Entitlements Dataset 2. Version 2014-03. University of Connecticut and University of Greifswald.Google Scholar
Soroka, S. 2006. Good News and Bad News: Asymmetric Responses to Economic Information. Journal of Politics 68 (2):372385.Google Scholar
Van Oorschot, W. 2006. Making the Difference in Social Europe: Deservingness Perceptions Among Citizens of European Welfare States. Journal of European Social Policy 16 (1):2342.10.1177/0958928706059829Google Scholar
Vis, Barbara. 2016. Taking stock of the Comparative Literature on the Role of Blame Avoidance Strategies in Social Policy Reform. Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 18 (2):122137.Google Scholar
Weaver, R. Kent. 1986. The Politics of Blame Avoidance. Journal of Public Policy 6 (4):371398.Google Scholar
Yantek, Thom. 1985. Government Popularity in Great Britain under Conditions of Economic Decline. Political Studies XXXIII:467483.Google Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Lee et al Dataset

Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Lee et al supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Lee et al supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 415.7 KB