Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T03:42:42.437Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social democratic representation and welfare spending: a quantitative case study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2019

Henning Finseraas
Henning Finseraas*
Affiliation:
Institute for Social Research, P.box 3233 Elisenberg, 0208Oslo, Norway
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The welfare state literature argues that Social Democratic party representation is of key importance for welfare state outcomes. However, few papers are able to separate the influence of parties from voter preferences, which implies that the partisan effects will be overstated. I study a natural experiment to identify a partisan effect. In 1995, the Labour Party (Ap) in the Norwegian municipality of Flå filed their candidate list too late and could not participate in the local election. Ap was the largest party in Flå in the entire post-World War period, but have not regained this position. I use the synthetic control method to study the effects on welfare spending priorities. I find small and insignificant partisan effects.

Keywords

PartisanshipWelfare spendingPolitical economySynthetic Control
Type
Research Notes
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 589 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2019

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.)

References

Abadie, A, Diamond, A and Hainmueller, J (2010) Synthetic control methods for comparative case studies: estimating the effect of california's tobacco control program. Journal of the American Statistical Association 105, 493–505.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abadie, A, Diamond, A and Hainmueller, J (2015) Comparative politics and the synthetic control method. American Journal of Political Science 59, 495–510.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Athey, S and Imbens, GW (2017) The state of applied econometrics: causality and policy evaluation. The Journal of Economic Perspectives 31, 3–32.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Besley, T and Coate, S (1997) An economic model of representative democracy. Quarterly Journal of Economics 112, 85–114.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Doudchenko, N and Imbens, G (2016) Balancing, regression, difference-in-differences and synthetic control methods: a synthesis. NBER Working Paper No. 22791.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dube, A and Zipperer, B (2015) Pooling multiple case studies using synthetic controls: an application to minimum wage policies. IZA DP No. 8944.Google Scholar
Esping-Andersen, G (1990) The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Cambridge: Polity Press.Google Scholar
Ferman, B, Pinto, C and Possebom, V (2017) Cherry picking with synthetic controls. MPRA Paper No. 78213.Google Scholar
Fiva, JH, Halse, A and Natvik, GJ (2015) Local Government Dataset. Department of Economics, University of Oslo.Google Scholar
Fiva, JH, Folke, O and Sørensen, RJ (2018) The power of parties: evidence from close municipal elections in Norway. The Scandinavian Journal of Economics 120, 3–30.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Folke, O (2014) Shades of brown and green: party effects in proportional election systems. Journal of the European Economic Association 12, 1361–1395.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hibbs, D (1977) Political parties and macroeconomic policy. American Political Science Review 71, 1467–1487.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hyytinen, A, Meriläinen, J, Saarimaa, T, Toivanen, O and Tukiainen, J (2018) Public employees as politicians: evidence from close elections. American Political Science Review 112, 68–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Imbens, G and Rubin, D (2015) Causal Inference for Statistics, Social, and Biological Sciences: An Introduction. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaul, A, Klößner, S, Pfeifer, G and Schieler, M (2017) Synthetic Control Methods: Never use all pre-intervention outcomes together with covariates. Working Paper.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, 425–446.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, DS, Moretti, E and Butler, MJ (2004) Do voters affect or elect policies? Evidence from the US house. Quarterly Journal of Economics 119, 807–859.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Munkerud, LC (2007) Undersøkelse av lokalpolitikere 2006/2007. En redegjørelse for undersøkelsens gjennomføring og datakvalitet—samt noen hovedtendenser. BI Handelshøyskolen Discussion Paper 1/2007.Google Scholar
Østerud, Ø and Selle, P (2006) Power and democracy in norway: the transformation of norwegian politics. Scandinavian Political Studies 29, 25–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pettersson-Lidbom, P (2008) Do parties matter for economic outcomes? A regression-discontinuity approach. Journal of the European Economic Association 6, 1037–1056.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: PDF

Finseraas supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Finseraas supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 124.9 KB
Supplementary material: Link

Finseraas Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZTXLHG
Link