Introduction
Political parties are often distinguished by their fundamental socio-economic ideologies, which have profound implications for social policies and the role of government. At the heart of these ideological divides is a fundamental disagreement on the extent and nature of government intervention in the economy (see e.g. Lipset & Rokkan, Reference Lipset, Rokkan, Lipset and Rokkan1967; Henjak, Reference Henjak2010). Parties on the economic left advocate for a robust role of government, characterised by higher taxes, increased regulatory oversight, significant government spending, and a comprehensive welfare state designed to mitigate inequalities and provide a safety net for the most vulnerable in society. This perspective is grounded in the belief that market failures and social inequities necessitate active government intervention to ensure fairness and social justice. Conversely, parties on the economic right champion a minimalist approach to government’s economic role, advocating for privatisation, lower taxes, reduced regulation, minimal government spending, and a leaner welfare state.
The divergent views of parties on the economic left and right on the role of government in the economy have significant ramifications for social policy and the welfare of citizens. In normal times, these ideological positions shape debates and policies on a wide range of issues, from healthcare and education to social security and unemployment benefits. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted concerns about inequality in society and societies throughout the world have been challenged with new and unexpected needs regarding social security (see e.g. Mäntyneva et al., Reference Mäntyneva, Ketonen, Peltoniemi, Aaltonen and Hiilamo2021).
As Cappelen et al. (Reference Cappelen, Falch, Sørensen and Tungodden2021) have noted, the most immediate consequence of the pandemic is that it creates health and economic inequality as a product of chance. Whereas some people have bad luck with the virus and become severely ill, others might have bad economic luck and become unemployed or experience some other unforeseen economic loss because of the crisis. This has highlighted how important life outcomes can be triggered by factors beyond individual control and showed how the crisis reinforces existing inequalities.
Globally, the pandemic had severe economic consequences across the world. At the same time, the pandemic did not affect the welfare states of the Global North equally. To mitigate and respond to these implications and prevent new risks from being realised, public policies, lockdowns, and diverse restrictions have been applied. Many countries have expanded the level and coverage of current social insurance and social assistance programs and implemented new programs such as emergency basic income or similar direct cash support. Furthermore, governments have presented various measures to prevent job losses and income drops. Simultaneously, increased public expenditures have raised concern in many countries.
Besides support measures implemented by governments, informal support between people also increased (see e.g. Grimalda et al., Reference Grimalda, Buchan, Ozturk, Pinate, Urso and Brewer2021). While the increased support reflects that the crisis makes salient the selfless behaviour of others in society, it also reflects an increased recognition of the mutual dependence. Thus, we are interested in whether solidarity has taken over ideology in the political decision-making during the COVID-19 pandemic.
During the pandemic, comparative research on social security measures accumulated: A shared understanding was that welfare states, public and social policy in particular, had a crucial role in crisis management, emergency relief, and early recovery from the pandemic (e.g., Aidukaite et al., Reference Aidukaite, Saxonberg, Szelewa and Szikra2021; Greer et al., Reference Greer, King, Massard Da Fonseca and Peralta-Santos2020; Greve et al., Reference Greve, Blomquist, Hvinden and Van Gerven2020; Nieuwenhuis and Yerkes, Reference Nieuwenhuis and Yerkes2021; Moreira and Hick, Reference Moreira and Hick2021; Pereirinha et al., Reference Pereirinha, Correia and Pereira2021; Seeman et al., Reference Seeman, Becker, He, Hohnerlein and Wilman2021). A large share of the literature has focused on the how question of pandemic social measures, which schemes have been introduced, and how the measures have been implemented (see e.g. Chung and Thewissen, Reference Chung and Thewissen2021; Nettle et al., Reference Nettle, Johnson, Johnson and Saxe2021; De Wispelaere and Morales, Reference De Wispelaere and Morales2021) and addressing path dependency of social policies during the pandemic (e.g. Bali et al., Reference Bali, He and Ramesh2022; Engler et al., Reference Engler, Brunner, Loviat, Abou-Chadi, Leemann, Glaser and Kübler2021; Mäntyneva et al., Reference Mäntyneva, Ketonen, Peltoniemi, Aaltonen and Hiilamo2021; Migone et al., Reference Migone2020). Moreover, previous research (e.g. Allcott et al., Reference Allcott, Boxell, Conway, Gentzkow, Thaler and Yang2020, Gollwitzer et al., Reference Gollwitzer, Martel, Brady, Pärnamets, Freedman, Knowles and Van Bavel2020, Grossman et al., Reference Grossman, Kim, Rexer and Thirumurthy2020, Campos-Mercade et al., Reference Campos-Mercade, Meier, Schneider and Wengström2021, Gadarian et al., Reference Gadarian, Goodman and Pepinsky2021, Grimalda et al., Reference Grimalda, Buchan, Ozturk, Pinate, Urso and Brewer2021, Grimalda et al., Reference Grimalda, Murtin, Pipke, Putterman and Sutter2022) has studied exhaustively the association between political/party identification and COVID-19-health-related behaviour and found that there really seems to be a clear link between political partisanship/party identification and pandemic related behaviour. Similarly, Crayne and Medeiros (Reference Crayne and Medeiros2021) have argued how a leader’s sensemaking approach is a critical element in successful crisis management. However, the relationship between ideology and COVID-19-related political decisions has, to the best of our knowledge, not been studied until now.
In this article, we study the link between pandemic-related social policy measures, incumbents’ ideological stand, and the welfare regime. The two research questions asked in this article are: (1) Does the pandemic-related social policy measures mirror the political attitudes of the incumbents? and (2) What role did the welfare regime play? To address the presented research questions, we utilise three datasets: V-Dem V-Party (v2) dataset from February 2022; a dataset covering social security measures made in 2020–21 in the welfare countries studied in this article; and Social Policy Innovations in the Wake of Automation and COVID-19 Outbreak dataset of structured expert interviews in 2020–21.
The key findings of this article suggest that the pandemic-related social policy measures do not mirror the political attitudes of the incumbents, and welfare regime did not seem to play any significant role. Thus, we argue that solidarity beat political ideologies when social policy measures were adopted during the pandemic. However, the expert interviews revealed some differences among countries: Nordic experts had a more optimistic views of the future, suggesting that the key characteristics of socio-democratic regime helped the countries to tackle the new and unexpected needs regarding social security, presented by the global pandemic. The following section reviews the previous literature on solidarity and fairness during the times of crisis, and in the third section, we outline the research design. The fourth and fifth sections present the analysis and conclusions.
Welfare during the times of crisis
The concept of solidarity is often traced back to Émile Durkheim and the division between mechanical and organic solidarity (Sister, Reference Sister1955, Herzog, Reference Herzog2018). Despite the popularity of Durkheim’s theory of solidarity presented in The Division of Labour in Society ([1893] Reference Durkheim2014), the distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity has received a lot of criticism (Thijssen, Reference Thijssen2012). The semantics of the concept of solidarity are complex. To overcome this, Dawson and Jennings (Reference Dawson and Jennings2012) have suggested three ways to express solidarity as a rational concept: “Standing up for,” “standing up with,” and “standing up as.” “Standing up for” relates to the idea of representation, advocating for, acting or speaking on behalf of the other. In this sense, solidarity is presented as protecting another who is disadvantaged or unable to articulate their needs in some way or to promote the return of the “other” back to a state where they can achieve their full potential.
The key idea of the second relational dimension, that of “standing up with,” is to seek to capture the equality between the parties, a firm mutuality. The third relational dimension is that of “standing up as,” which contains the strongest degree of affiliation with the “other.” “Standing up as” does not require the eradication of individuality and difference. A plausible way of seeing this element in action is to see it at work not just in the grounded biological nature of human vulnerability but also in a shared polity or culture that requires a shared commitment to equal respect, civil discourse, and tolerance of difference and disagreement. More precisely, solidarity is not just something that we reserve for those whom we agree with. Instead, it entails a shared space where we listen to and learn from each other (Dawson and Jennings, Reference Dawson and Jennings2012).
According to Durkheim (Thijssen, Reference Thijssen2012), individuals tend to look for functional differences, which are complementary rather than mutually exclusive. In this sense, opposites attract, but not all opposites attract equally strongly. Thus, complementary differences breed solidarity. Solidarity can be understood as the degree to which people think society’s problems should be given priority over one’s own problems (Cappelen et al., Reference Cappelen, Falch, Sørensen and Tungodden2021). In fact, Axel Honneth has introduced the term “social solidarity” to explicitly point out the fact that solidarity is connected to and bounded by the normative framework of society (Petersen and Willig, Reference Petersen and Willig2002, Thijssen, Reference Thijssen2012). In this article, we understand solidarity similarly, as a social unity of togetherness.
Sociologists have long studied emergent behaviour, an area of study, “collective behaviour,” which focuses on dynamic social phenomena such as crowds, riots, fads and fashion, panic, revolutions, origins of cults, ephemeral mass actions, and changes in public opinion. The common element is the nontraditional nature of the behaviour, which generally arises because the standard ways of acting cannot be followed or are not appropriate for certain occasions (Park and Burgess, Reference Park and Burgess1921, Rodríguez et al., Reference Rodríguez, Trainor and Quarantelli2006). During the crisis period, there is a great deal of emergent behaviour, both at the individual and group levels. The emergent behaviour can be described as nontraditional or new behaviour, different from routine or customary norm-guided actions. This new behaviour is often heavily prosocial, helping immensely in coping with the extreme and unusual demands of a disaster situation (Rodríguez et al., Reference Rodríguez, Trainor and Quarantelli2006).
As Dawson and Jennings (Reference Dawson and Jennings2012) have noted, solidarity allows us to see different factors such as the distribution of health and disease, as being of joint and common concern. While classical economic theory has generally assumed the preferences of trust, risk, and time to be immutable individual characteristics, more contemporary studies with experimental evidence have drawn a quite different picture and even argued that preferences can be affected by events and circumstances in the long term (see e.g. Loewenstein and Angner, Reference Loewenstein, Angner, Loewenstein, Read and Baumeister2003, Cassar et al., Reference Cassar, Healy and Von Kessler2017). In an experimental study conducted in Thailand after the 2004 tsunami, Cassar et al. (Reference Cassar, Healy and Von Kessler2017) found that natural disasters may cause their victims to become significantly more trusting, risk-averse, and impatient. Similarly, previous studies have shown that people tend to become more altruistic after being exposed to violence or war (Voors et al., Reference Voors, Nillesen, Verwimp, Bulte, Lensink and Van Soest2012, Bauer et al., Reference Bauer, Blattman, Chytilová, Henrich, Miguel and Mitts2016). In contrast, economic recessions are argued to make people more selfish (Fisman et al., Reference Fisman, Jakiela and Kariv2015).
Previous research has argued that global pandemic has the potential to change moral views and public policy. For instance, in the US, the pandemic has been shown to have increased solidarity among Americans – independent of political affiliation, gender, age, or geography. However, people’s moral views were strongly associated with their policy preferences for redistribution. (Cappelen et al., Reference Cappelen, Falch, Sørensen and Tungodden2021). According to Cappelen et al. (Reference Cappelen, Falch, Sørensen and Tungodden2021), a reminder of the crisis makes people not only more willing to prioritise society’s problems over their own problems but also more tolerant of inequalities due to luck. Yet, morals and fairness are highly contextual questions even during “normal times.” As Almås et al. (Reference Almås, Cappelen and Tungodden2019) have suggested in a large-scale study of the US and Norway, there are significant differences in fairness views between countries: Americans are much more accepting of inequalities due to luck than Norwegians.
During the pandemic, questions regarding solidarity and fairness were first considered with regard to fair allocation of the scarce medical resources, such as deciding which patients receive life-saving care and which do not in the occasion when not everyone needing the treatment can be treated due to lack of resources (Emanuel et al., Reference Emanuel, Persad, Upshur, Thome, Parker, Glickman, Zhang, Boyle, Smith and Phillips2020). The ethical values were tested as choices between benefit maximation (save most lifes/save most life-years), equal treatment (first come-first served), benefit to others (priority to research participants and health care workers), and prioritising worst off (sickest first, youngest/oldest first) were made (Emanuel et al., Reference Emanuel, Persad, Upshur, Thome, Parker, Glickman, Zhang, Boyle, Smith and Phillips2020). Further along, similar questions regarding prioritisation were raised regarding, e.g., access to vaccines.
Alongside health risk mitigation, the pandemic also revealed an urgent need to improve social security worldwide. As noted by Cassar et al. (Reference Cassar, Healy and Von Kessler2017), disasters constitute a persistent threat to economic welfare. Thus, aid directed at diverse groups (including e.g., at-risk employees, students, and families) raised a new set of questions regarding solidarity, fairness, and the role of the state. As Lopez-Valcarel and Barber (Reference Lopez-Valcarcel and Barber2017) have pointed out, some health problems have a clear social dimension, which becomes more acute during a crisis. On the other hand, there is a real risk of a “post-pandemic double burden of disease,” where the pressures of having to manage the COVID-19 pandemic have caused significant disruptions to the usual healthcare systems and society, possibly leading to increased morbidity and mortality in the long-term if not managed appropriately (Chan and Horne, Reference Chan and Horne2021). Thus, the “third wave” of crisis caused by the pandemic, the overdue health care burden, might still offer yet another perspective on the solidarity viewpoint.
Previous research regarding the global pandemic has been done from diverse societal viewpoints: Campos-Mercade et al., 2021 have studied the impact of diverse policies aimed at diminishing the effects of the COVID-19 depending on the degree of prosociality in a population. Several studies (see e.g. Bruine de Bruin et al., Reference Bruine De Bruin, Saw and Goldman2020, Bobba and Hubé, Reference Bobba and Hubé2021, Kerr et al., Reference Kerr, Panagopoulos and Van Der Linden2021) have pointed out that political polarisation was evident during the COVID-19 pandemic. With a survey of a representative sample of the US population in 2020, Grimalda et al. (Reference Grimalda, Murtin, Pipke, Putterman and Sutter2022) found that during the pandemic, political polarisation was considerably larger than behavioural polarisation. Yet, as Campos-Mercade et al. (Reference Campos-Mercade, Meier, Schneider and Wengström2021) have found, a large majority of people were very reluctant to put others at risk for their personal benefit. Similarly, previous research has found that political identification and partisanship have played a significant role in COVID-19-health-related behaviour (Allcott et al., Reference Allcott, Boxell, Conway, Gentzkow, Thaler and Yang2020, Gollwitzer et al., Reference Gollwitzer, Martel, Brady, Pärnamets, Freedman, Knowles and Van Bavel2020, Grossman et al., Reference Grossman, Kim, Rexer and Thirumurthy2020, Gadarian et al., Reference Gadarian, Goodman and Pepinsky2021). However, the relationship between political ideology and COVID-19-related political decisions has not been studied until now.
Political incumbents during the pandemic
As shown in Table 1, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the eight countries studied in this article saw several governments from all parts of the political spectrum. During 2020 and 2021, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, and UK had only one incumbent government, whereas Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the US saw changes in the state leadership. Of the socio-democratic regime’s countries studied in this article, in Denmark, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen has been in power since 2019, first leading Frederiksen I, a minority government of the Social Democrats in 2019–2022, followed by Frederiksen II, majority government consisting Social Democrats, Venstre, and the Moderates. In Finland, Sanna Marin’s majority government was in power from 2019 to 2023, consisting of the Social Democratic Party, Centre Party, Green League, Left Alliance, and Swedish People’s Party. In Norway, Erna Solberg’s right-wing government was in power from 2013 to 2021, consisting of Conservative Party, Progress Party (until 2020), Liberal Party (2018–2021), and Christian Democratic Party (2019–2021), followed by Jonas Gahr Støre’s minority centre-left government (from 2021 onwards), consisting of Labour Party and Centre Party. In Sweden, three governments had been in power during the pandemic. First, Stefan Löfven’s II centre-left coalition minority government was in power from 2019 to 2021, consisting of Social Democrats and Green Party, followed by Stefan Löfven’s III government (2021–2021), centre-left coalition minority government, consisting of Social Democrats and Green Party, which in turn was followed by Magdalena Andersson’s centre-left single-party minority government (2021–2022), consisting of Social Democrats, followed by Ulf Kristersson’s right-wing minority government (2022-), consisting of Moderate Party, Christian Democrats and Liberals.
Table 1. Political powers in the eight case study countries
Of the corporatist-conservative regime’s countries, in Germany, Angela Merkel’s IV coalition government was in power for 2018–2021. Merkel’s majority government consisted of the Christian Democratic Union, Social Democratic Party, and Christian Social Union in Bavaria, and it was followed by Olaf Scholz’s centre-left majority coalition of Social Democratic Party, Alliance 90/The Greens and Free Democratic Party. In Netherlands, Mark Rutte’s III, a majority centre-right government was in power from 2017 to 2022. Of the liberal regime’s countries, Boris Johnson’s II conservative government was in power from 2019 to 2020. Finally, in the US, the power changed during the pandemic, as the Senate and House were both held by Republicans until the 2020 presidential elections, after which the power shifted to the Democrats in both.
Research design
In this article, we scrutinise eight OECD countries: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK, and the US. The countries were chosen on the basis of traditional welfare state regime theory (Esping-Andersen, Reference Esping-Andersen1990). The countries represent three different welfare regimes: Corporatist-conservative countries (Germany and Netherlands), liberal countries (UK and the US), and socio-democratic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden). Nordic countries are overrepresented to provide a comparative setting for socio-democratic welfare regime, which is known for a high level of solidarity. In order to analyse the political governments’ social policy measures in welfare states during the COVID-19 pandemic, we utilise three data sets. First, in order to determine the party positioning and parties’ promotion for means-tested or universalistic welfare policies, we used the V-Dem V-Party (v2) dataset from February 2022. This dataset includes more than 1,900 parties in 168 countries during the years 1970–2019 (Lindberg et al., Reference Lindberg, Düpont, Higashijima, Berker Kavasoglu, Marquardt, Bernhard, Döring, Hicken, Laebens, Medzihorsky, Neundorf, Reuter, Ruth–Lovell, Weghorst, Wiesehomeier, Wright, Alizada, Bederke, Gastaldi, Grahn, Hindle, Ilchenko, Von Römer, Wilson, Pemstein and Seim2022b, Lindberg et al., Reference Lindberg, Düpont, Higashijima, Berker Kavasoglu, Marquardt, Bernhard, Döring, Hicken, Laebens, Medzihorsky, Neundorf, Reuter, Ruth–Lovell, Weghorst, Wiesehomeier, Wright, Alizada, Bederke, Gastaldi, Grahn, Hindle, Ilchenko, Von Römer, Wilson, Pemstein and Seim2022a, Düpont et al., Reference Düpont, Kavasoglu, Lührmann and Reuter2022). We utilised OLS regression to estimate the coefficients of linear regression equations to describe the relationship between party positioning and means-tested or universalistic welfare policies.
The second dataset we used in this article was collected between July 2020 and January 2022. The dataset covers a total of 114 social security measures, which addressed both traditional risks (such as unemployment and sickness) and new risks (such as over-indebtedness). The data set includes eight welfare states: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States. The data were collected from parliaments’, ministries’, and governments’ official documents and bulletins focusing on social security measures (Mäntyneva et al., Reference Mäntyneva, Ketonen, Peltoniemi, Aaltonen and Hiilamo2021). In addition, data were collected from COVID-19 databases such as those conducted by Eurofound, ISSA, and IMF. The measures included in the dataset were introduced in 2020, and then we followed whether or not the measures were continued in 2021. The dataset includes the measures’ content, scope, size (amount), and timing of the social security measures. The data collection was funded by Academy of Finland (special funding for COVID-19 -related research, 13355273).
We used this dataset to compare the party positioning of the incumbent parties and the pandemic-related social policy measures. Seeing that both the size of population (5 million of Norway and Finland; 331 million of the US) and the size of the economy (GDP per person UK 46,510.3 US$; Norway 89,154.3 US$) vary extensively among the countries chosen for this article (The World Bank, 2023), we have chosen to analyse the number of social policy measures instead of, e.g., the spending or the number of populations covered. Seeing that the number of social policy measures is a more equal variable, as, in principle, social policy measures are adopted only once; it offers a more comparable setting for the analysis of this article.
Third, we used Social Policy Innovations in the Wake of Automation and COVID-19 Outbreak dataset to gain more profound understanding on the pandemic-related social policy measures taken, as well as the underlying context of the decision-making in the studied countries. This data set was combined with structured expert interviews in 2020–21. The data collection took place between 1 October 2020 and 30 November 2021. An invitation letter was sent via email to a number of experts in the following fields: economics; public policy; social policy; and health sciences. In practise, policymakers, economists, and researchers from within these fields were invited to take part in the study. The experts were identified by an online search of the leading relevant institutions (such as ministries, labour market organisations, universities, research institutions, and chambers of commerce) in the selected countries.
The interviews were carried out anonymously using an online questionnaire that included open-ended, structured questions relating to social policy innovations in the wake of automation and the COVID-19 pandemic. The participants self-generated the data by filling in their answers. Thus, our methodology combined traditional interviews with surveying. The aim of this type of data collection was to allow participants to extend their responses further than what survey questionnaire would have allowed, yet enabling comparative analysis by keeping the questions structured. The data set used in this article includes fourteen interviews of experts from Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the US. In this article, the interviewees are identified with a running identification number that corresponds to the order in which the interviews were recorded. The complete list of the interview questions is presented in Appendix Table 1. In this article, we analysed the responses to the sections E-K. The data collection was funded by Strategic Research Council (Academy of Finland) project Manufacturing 4.0 – Reshaping social policies. Our aim is to be able to tease out additional viewpoints with the expert interview data, information which cannot be discovered by using solely quantitative data sets. While the quantitative aspects of the research allow us to answer the questions of “what”, the qualitative aspects illustrate the reasoning for “why” and “how”. Thus, we believe that the mixed methods design allows us best to answer the research questions of this study.
Results
Traditionally, parties on the economic left want government to play an active role in the economy. This includes higher taxes, more regulation and government spending, and a more generous welfare state. Similarly, parties on the economic right emphasise a reduced economic role for government: privatisation, lower taxes, less regulation, less government spending, and a leaner welfare state. We tested this assumption with the V-Party dataset. In Figure 1, all the nearly 2,000 parties in 168 countries of the V-Party dataset have been included. On the y-axis is the extent to what parties promote means-tested or universalistic welfare policies, and on the x-axis, the parties’ overall ideological stand on economic issuesFootnote 1. The linear trend is really quite clear. The regression analysis of Figure 1 is also presented in Appendix Table 3.
Figure 1. Economic left–right spectrum of political parties and their promotion for universalism.
It seems clear that in “normal times” political parties have clear, ideologically bound, standing on what type of welfare policies they promote. Thus, we wanted to test whether or not the left–right spectrum of political parties and their promotion of universalism was prevalent also during the global pandemic. First, we explored the social policy measures implemented in the eight countries during the first year of the pandemic. As shown in Table 2., we categorised the social policy measures implemented in eight countries under ten categories. The most prevalent types of measures were those either tackling unemployment or promoting employment. Conversely, the number of direct income transfers, as well as measures regarding housing, pensions, or last resort assistance remained low.
Table 2. Social policy measures in 2020
Next, we compared the eight countries (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, UK and the US) with regard to the median value of the incumbent parties on an economic left–right scale and the total number of the COVID-related social policy measures implemented in the countries. The median value of the governing parties standing on the economic left–right scale was adopted from the V-Parties v2 dataset (the variable v2pariglef) (Lindberg et al., Reference Lindberg, Düpont, Higashijima, Berker Kavasoglu, Marquardt, Bernhard, Döring, Hicken, Laebens, Medzihorsky, Neundorf, Reuter, Ruth–Lovell, Weghorst, Wiesehomeier, Wright, Alizada, Bederke, Gastaldi, Grahn, Hindle, Ilchenko, Von Römer, Wilson, Pemstein and Seim2022a). After this, we calculated the median value of the governing parties of each country and compared it with the total number of COVID-related social policy measures (Figure 2). This provides crucial information on the ideological orientation towards the left/right spectrum that the incumbent governments were leading towards. Interestingly, as shown in Figure 2, there was no relation between the governing parties’ positioning on the traditional left–right scale and the number of the COVID-related social policy measures. This means that it did not significantly matter whether the governing parties of the eight countries under scrutiny were from the economic left or right, on how many COVID-related social policy measures were made in these countries. Unlike the findings of the OLS regression (Figure 1.), for the adoption of the pandemic-related social policy measures, it did not matter whether the incumbent parties were on the left or the right side of the political spectrum. More precisely, it seems that the political identification of the parties did not influence the number of the measures.
Figure 2. Governing parties’ standing on economic left–right scale compared with the total number of COVID-related social policy measures.
Similarly, as shown in Figure 3, the comparison of the three welfare state regimes did not show linear trends either. The trends were also very similar when comparing the percentage of social policy expenditure relative to the Gross domestic product (GDP) (Figure 4). This is remarkable, as the welfare state regimes have traditionally been a rather good variable to predict socio-political context (e.g. Papadakis and Bean, Reference Papadakis and Bean1993, Gelissen, Reference Gelissen2000, Levecque et al., Reference Levecque, Van Rossem, De Boyser, Van De Velde and Bracke2011. Thus, it seems that unlike during the “normal times,” during the times of pandemic, the governing parties’ political or ideological stand on welfare state does not really play a role when adopting social policy measures. Instead, a united front seems a more likely way to go.
Figure 3. Number of COVID-related social policy measures in three welfare regimes.
There were, however, some differences on the measures adopted in different regimes. As shown in Figure 5, all the studied countries implemented measures especially regarding to unemployment and employment promotion. The corporatist-conservative countries of our sample did not implement health-related social policy measures nor measures regarding last-resort assistance or direct income transfers, unlike countries in other regimes. On the other hand, the socio-democratic countries did not implement measures to prevent over-indebtedness as eagerly as countries in other regimes. Considering that the overall number of the measures did not vary significantly among the regimes or on the country level, we deduct these differences can be explained with the country-specific details of the selected countries. For instance, in some countries, the last-resort assistance may have needed reforming, while in other countries, students may have had stronger social security already prior to the pandemic and thus did not necessarily need any targeted measures. These notions were most likely present also in the decision-making processes.
Figure 5. COVID-related social policy measures in three welfare regimes.
Next, in order to gain more in-depth understanding of the role of solidarity in the decision-making context behind the COVID-related social policy measures, we analysed the interview data. Even though there was not much variation in the number of implemented social policy measures, Nordic countries (socio-democratic regime) stood out in the crowd in managing and funding the combat against the COVID-19. In the expert interviews, most country experts noted that managing the lockdown period and subsequent economic distress as well as the costs caused by the measures were funded with debt. However, despite higher debt levels, country experts of Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden seemed to have been more optimistic with view on future for well-being than country experts from other countries.
An interviewee from the US noted that the lockdown period and the subsequent economic distress were funded “through direct payments to employers and employees,” whereas the costs were covered with “short term deficit spending” (16, the US). Similarly, in Denmark “government debt has increased substantially. That is possible given that we are targeting temporary measures. Given the low interest rate and the low level of government debt initially, that is not a problem” (I9, Denmark). “So far it looks as if the costs will be funded by increasing debt. This is not a problem at present. Danish government debt levels are low (net debt is close to zero, gross debt around 40 pct. of GDP.) and interest rates are exceptionally low. The COVID-19 crisis has not changed the long-term assessment of the public finances as clearly sustainable.” (I4, Denmark). Also, in Sweden and in Netherlands, the costs were covered with increased debt: “The costs will be covered by increased government debt and slightly higher governmental interest payments” (I11, Sweden). “Public debt has risen. NL had a very low public debt and this has now risen to the EU-maximum levels [‥]” (I21, Netherlands).
Especially the experts from Netherlands were worried about the economic future, the repayment of the public debt, and the future generations. ‘It [the costs of the COVID-19-related social policy measures] will be paid for by the inhabitants of the country of course, it is many loans that will be paid with taxes. Of course, also the next generations will pay dearly for this’. (I15, Netherlands). ‘[‥] Current funding of self-employed and companies is funding that needs to be repaid. It is a type of loan. Personal opinion: a lot of funding has created ghost-companies, that is companies that should have stopped functioning but keep on acting as if nothing happened. The public funding will be hard to recover from these companies. It is inefficient. We will see a lot of failures in 2021 and rising unemployment. And the issues with the self-employed have not been solved’. (I21, Netherlands). ‘[‥] Depends on the fact if the tide can be turned in foreseeable time span. If yes, then no new problems; if no then several issues, like: -arrears in education (schools closed) -arrears in healthcare (suspended treatments) -social disruption due to unemployment and income loss, bankruptcy of many companies, “lost generation”’. (I16, Netherlands).
The Nordic experts’ key notions highlighted the good prepandemic economic situation, consensus politics, tripartite agreements, and cooperation between social partners and government. “The Danish system of consensus politics and tripartite agreements have helped a lot. Free health care and sickness coverage has also helped” (I4, Denmark). “The Government gives compensation to workers and employers affected by COVID19/Locked downs. The different systems are evaluated as we go, and adjusted to the situation. It is hard to say what will be the situation after the pandemic, but we have a close cooperation between the social partners and the Government on what is needed, learnt during the pandemic” (I8, Norway). In this sense, expert interviews revealed more optimistic views for future among the Nordic experts.
However, while the pandemic demonstrated the well-functioning features of the society, the pandemic and lockdowns also highlighted the need for future improvements: “Lockdown has increased awareness of the inequalities in the Danish Labour market, with white collar workers retreating to working from home and blue-collar workers in transport, hotels and restaurants being laid off or working in covid-19 exposed positions in retail, health care and care for the elderly.” (I4, Denmark). “Our Social Security Trust Fund is spending more than it brings in and expected to run a deficit within the next decade or so. We’re facing a reduction in paid benefits on the one hand and a change in how these benefits are distributed on the other [‥] We have a relatively paltry welfare state, for example our Congress has been unable to provide unemployment support for those left jobless as a result of the COVID pandemic.” (I6, the US).
Conclusions
We asked if the pandemic-related social policy measures mirror the political attitudes of the incumbents and what role does the welfare regime play. The previous studies on solidarity during the times of crisis have noted that there is a great deal of emergent behaviour, both at the individual and group levels (Rodríguez et al., Reference Rodríguez, Trainor and Quarantelli2006). A crisis makes people more willing to prioritise society’s problems over their own problems, but also more tolerant of inequalities due to luck (Cappelen et al., Reference Cappelen, Falch, Sørensen and Tungodden2021). Natural disasters may cause its victims to become significantly more trusting, risk-averse, and impatient (Cassar et al., Reference Cassar, Healy and Von Kessler2017), and people tend to become more altruistic after being exposed to violence or war (Voors et al., Reference Voors, Nillesen, Verwimp, Bulte, Lensink and Van Soest2012, Bauer et al, Reference Bauer, Blattman, Chytilová, Henrich, Miguel and Mitts2016). In contrast, economic recessions make people more selfish (Fisman et al., Reference Fisman, Jakiela and Kariv2015), but the impact of diverse policies aimed at diminishing the effects of the COVID-19 depends on the degree of prosociality in a population (Campos-Mercade et al., Reference Campos-Mercade, Meier, Schneider and Wengström2021). However, while the increase in solidarity may reflect that the crisis makes salient the selfless behaviour of others in society, it may also highlight the growing awareness and recognition of mutual dependence.
The key findings of this article suggest that unlike during the normal times, during the times of pandemic, the governing parties’ political or ideological stand on welfare state does not really play a role when adopting social policy measures. While during “normal times,” parties on the economic left want government to play an active role in the economy, and parties on the economic right emphasise a reduced economic role for government, during the pandemic, the political standing of the incumbent parties remained insignificant. Instead, a united front seems a more likely way to go. Therefore, not surprisingly, the comparison of three welfare state regimes did not show linear trends either. In fact, despite being in three different types welfare state regimes, all selected welfare states during the crisis have promoted social policy, without fundamental differences according to the types of the welfare state. However, expert interviews revealed a more optimistic views for the future among the Nordic experts, possibly due to the key characteristics of socio-democratic regime. Thus, it seems that pandemics relate more to war-like situations than economic crisis.
While we cannot measure solidarity as a basis for social policy measures per se, our findings regarding similarities in policies are partly in line with the previous research: According to Cappelen et al. (Reference Cappelen, Falch, Sørensen and Tungodden2021), the pandemic has been shown to have increased solidarity among Americans. However, unlike Cappelen et al. (Reference Cappelen, Falch, Sørensen and Tungodden2021), arguing that people’s moral views were strongly associated with their policy preferences for redistribution, we found that this was not the case with governments and social policy measures. As noted by Cassar et al. (Reference Cassar, Healy and Von Kessler2017), disasters fundamentally change people and the communities in which they live. Previous research (e.g. Tedeschi and Calhoun, Reference Tedeschi and Calhoun2004, Cassar et al, Reference Cassar, Healy and Von Kessler2017) has observed that severe (natural) disasters often foster a sense of community. This seems to have also been the case during the COVID-19 pandemic and the new public policies adopted by governments to prevent further suffering (such as job losses and a drop in income).
Politicians and parties which enter government should fulfil their pledges, and they are indeed under some moral obligation to at least attempt to do so. For instance, Costello and Thomson (Reference Costello and Thomson2008) have argued that most coalition parties fill more than half of their pledges, and for one-party cabinet, the number is presumably higher. Therefore, for politicians, following the ideological traits of their party and fulfilling their pledges are extremely important for remaining in office. Thus, the result that governments, regardless of their political ideology and regime, carried out similar policy measures throughout the world, is an exceptional finding. The key takeaway of this article is that political decision-making and policymaking in future crises and shocks (such as regarding the climate change) might in fact not be as closely connected to political ideologies as they have been in the past. Instead, as the findings of this article point out, in future crisis there may be fewer options, and thus, the decision-making might be less ideology-based.
While the pandemic is eventually receding in terms of excess mortality, it is still difficult to draw conclusions on how it changed societies and whether these changes will become permanent. Moreover, as the “third wave of crisis” caused by the pandemic, the overdue healthcare burden, is still to be solved, and many unforeseen questions are still rising.
Competing interest
The author(s) declare none.
Appendix Table 1. Interview questions
Appendix Table 2. V-Party variables utilised in analysis (Lindberg et al., Reference Lindberg, Düpont, Higashijima, Berker Kavasoglu, Marquardt, Bernhard, Döring, Hicken, Laebens, Medzihorsky, Neundorf, Reuter, Ruth–Lovell, Weghorst, Wiesehomeier, Wright, Alizada, Bederke, Gastaldi, Grahn, Hindle, Ilchenko, Von Römer, Wilson, Pemstein and Seim2022a)
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