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59
2008: Partisan Politics, the Welfare State, and Three Worlds of Human Capital Formation
- In: Comparative Political Studies 41(4–5
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The online version of this article can be found at:
State redistribution in comparative perspective: A cross-national analysis of the developed countries
, 2004
"... This paper offers a detailed discussion of fiscal redistribution in the developed countries, employing data that have been computed from the Luxembourg Income Study’s micro-level database. LIS data are detailed enough to allow us not only to measure overall redistribution, but also to explore whethe ..."
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This paper offers a detailed discussion of fiscal redistribution in the developed countries, employing data that have been computed from the Luxembourg Income Study’s micro-level database. LIS data are detailed enough to allow us not only to measure overall redistribution, but also to explore whether redistribution has been achieved primarily through taxes or transfers; to determine whether it is associated with the size or the internal target efficiency of social benefits; to compare the redistributive effect of the most important individual transfers; to focus separately on households in poverty and those headed by persons of working age; and to explore trends in redistribution between the late 1970s and early 2000s. The paper concludes by demonstrating the practical usefulness of the data presented by conducting an empirical analysis of several proposed explanations for cross-country and over-time variance in fiscal redistribution. The role of the state in redistributing income is at the core of the discipline of political science. Indeed, perhaps the most familiar definition of politics itself is that of Harold Lasswell (1936): “Who gets what, when, how.” The discipline’s focus on redistribution was recently reaffirmed, more than half a century after Lasswell wrote,
Precarious politics and return volatility
- Review of Financial Studies
, 2012
"... We examine how local and global political risks affect industry return volatility. Our central premise is that some industries are more sensitive to political events than others. We find that industries that are more dependent on trade, contract enforcement, and labor exhibit greater return volatili ..."
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We examine how local and global political risks affect industry return volatility. Our central premise is that some industries are more sensitive to political events than others. We find that industries that are more dependent on trade, contract enforcement, and labor exhibit greater return volatility when local political risks are higher. Political uncertainty in countries of trading partners of trade-dependent industries similarly results in greater volatility. Volatility decomposition results indicate that while systematic volatility is associated with domestic political uncertainty, global political risks translate into larger idiosyncratic volatility. (JEL G10, G15) On September 29, 2008, the U.S. House of Representatives voted down the bailout bill proposed by the Treasury and the Federal Reserve in order to provide extra liquidity to the troubled U.S. financial markets. Within two hours the Chicago Board Options Exchange Volatility Index increased by 17%, while in one day the Dow Jones Industrial Average Index dropped 778 points. Global stock markets reacted in a similar fashion.1 Clearly, the uncertainty about the outcome of a critical vote was reflected by both domestic and global stock
Dialectics of Institutional Change: The Transformation of Social Insurance Financing in Israel
- Socio-Economic Review
, 2009
"... Social insurance financing is notoriously path-dependent, yet in Israel a series of unobtrusive changes ultimately led to the virtual elimination of employer contri-butions. This outcome is explained by combining insights into the politics and pol-itical economy of taxation with a theoretical approa ..."
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Social insurance financing is notoriously path-dependent, yet in Israel a series of unobtrusive changes ultimately led to the virtual elimination of employer contri-butions. This outcome is explained by combining insights into the politics and pol-itical economy of taxation with a theoretical approach to understanding institutional change which takes conflict seriously. Institutional arrangements typically emerge as settlements of inherently contradictory goals, and their foun-dational contradictions are not necessarily eliminated through processes of repro-duction. Our case study illustrates how conflicting interests generate susceptibility to institutional change and shape its trajectories. While recent extensions to path-dependency theory suggest that institutions become vulnerable when returns decrease, we find that change may result from unbalanced returns (increasing for some while decreasing for others) or altered conditions which unleash repressed conflicts of interest. Further, in contrast to the expectation that insti-tutional evolution follows a unidirectional path in which reversals are unlikely, we identify a dialectical trajectory which potentially includes the revival of see-mingly foregone alternatives.
Insiders, Outsiders and the Politics of Corporate Governance: How Ownership Structure Affects Party
- Positions in Britain, Germany and France. In: Comparative Political Studies 42
, 2009
"... This article argues that differences in the dispersion of corporate ownership help to explain why party positions on corporate governance vary across countries and over time. It shows that British, French, and German political debates over takeover regulation since the 1950s differ significantly alo ..."
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This article argues that differences in the dispersion of corporate ownership help to explain why party positions on corporate governance vary across countries and over time. It shows that British, French, and German political debates over takeover regulation since the 1950s differ significantly along several dimensions, including the pattern of left–right competition and the timing of debate, and that these differences correspond to differences in the structure of corporate ownership. To explain the observed correlation, the article presumes that parties cater to their core constituents and so provides reasons explaining why ownership structure shapes the preferences of upscale socioeconomic groups and working-class clienteles. These empirical and theoretical contributions inform the literatures on party competition, corporate governance, varieties of capitalism, and institutional change.
LEFT PARTIES, POOR VOTERS, AND ELECTORAL PARTICIPATION IN ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES
"... While income inequality is an important normative issue for students of democratic politics, little is known about its effects on citizens ’ electoral participation. We develop a formal model of the incentives for left parties to mobilize lower income voters. It posits that countries ’ income distri ..."
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While income inequality is an important normative issue for students of democratic politics, little is known about its effects on citizens ’ electoral participation. We develop a formal model of the incentives for left parties to mobilize lower income voters. It posits that countries ’ income distributions and competition on the left provide different incentives for left parties to mobilize lower income voters. In the absence of political competition, higher levels of income inequality reduce the incentives of dominant left parties to target lower income voters. However, competition on the left creates incentives for a dominant left party to mobilize lower income voters, thus counteracting the negative impact of inequality on parties ’ incentives to target them. As a consequence, the negative association between inequality and turnout at the aggregate level is muted by the presence of several parties on the left side of the political spectrum. Using aggregate data on elections in OECD countries between 1980 and 2002 and election surveys collected in the second wave of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems project, we find strong and consistent support for our model.
Information, Social Networks and Interest-Based Voting: Consequences for Distributive Politics
"... While many people are rationally ignorant about politics, most political economy models of preferences and voting assume that people are well-informed about their interests. Here, we endogenize the individual incentive to acquire political information, with stark implications for understanding parti ..."
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While many people are rationally ignorant about politics, most political economy models of preferences and voting assume that people are well-informed about their interests. Here, we endogenize the individual incentive to acquire political information, with stark implications for understanding partisan politics. We argue that the incentive to acquire political knowledge is a byproduct of other incentives, both private and social, and that these incentives are unequally distributed across groups. For those who lack incentives to be informed the rational strategy is to vote centrist. We test the model on public opinion data from 16 advanced democracies and show that the coupling between economic interests and political choice depends on social networks that have weakened over time. Because those with low information vote centrist we can explain the decline in class voting as reflecting a decline in the social incentives to be politically informed, linked to declining union membership. 1
1 Explaining welfare state preferences in dualized societies
"... Explaining social policy preferences has become a key topic in comparative politics. Labor market risk affects these preferences, but does dualization generate preference divides between labor market insiders and outsiders? The literature fundamentally disagrees on this question, because of differen ..."
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Explaining social policy preferences has become a key topic in comparative politics. Labor market risk affects these preferences, but does dualization generate preference divides between labor market insiders and outsiders? The literature fundamentally disagrees on this question, because of different assumptions regarding the relevant locus of preference formation: political economy scholars answer in the affirmative, since they focus on employment vulnerability and preferences of individuals, while authors adopting a more sociologist perspective argue that household effects obliterate insider-outsider divides. Using a new continuous measure of ‘outsiderness ’ and data from the European Social Survey, we show that labor market vulnerability explains social policy preferences, even if we control for the partner’s vulnerability. The household situation does matter, but its effect is limited: for most individuals ’ preference formation, their own labor market risk prevails over the effect of their partners ’ risk. More importantly even, the household effect is conditional on gender. Our findings have far-reaching implications for the politicization of insider-outsider divides.
Rethinking Party Politics and the Welfare State: Recent Advances in the L iterature
, 2010
"... - first draft-comments welcome ..."
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Explaining welfare preferences in dualized societies
"... Draft, comments welcome A growing literature argues that politics in mature welfare states is characterized by new distributive conflicts. New risk groups are expected to advocate specific policies, which respond to their particular needs. The dualization-literature conceptualizes these risk groups ..."
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Draft, comments welcome A growing literature argues that politics in mature welfare states is characterized by new distributive conflicts. New risk groups are expected to advocate specific policies, which respond to their particular needs. The dualization-literature conceptualizes these risk groups in terms of insiders and outsiders, depending on their labor market vulnerability. In this paper, we test whether insiders and outsiders differ in their policy preferences. Redistribution and social investment typically target the needs of outsiders, while social insurance and performance-related incomes are more advantageous for insiders. Hence, we test whether we find insider-outsider divides with regard to preferences for these policies. In addition, we also test interaction effects with education, since high- and low-skilled outsiders have distinctive risk profiles and needs. The analysis is based on micro-level data from the ESS 2008. The results consistently confirm the expected insider-outsider divide with regard to all analyzed policy preferences (redistribution, social investment, social insurance and the respondent’s support for performance-related incomes). Further, the analysis of interaction effects with education shows that insider-outsider divides on social investment and social insurance prevail only among the medium- and high-skilled respondents, whereas attitudes on the redistribution of income differ between insiders and outsiders throughout the whole workforce. The paper provides evidence that the increasing dualization of labor markets is reflected in individual preferences and attitudes. This is an important result for studies that analyze the political mobilization of insiders and outsiders and – more generally – the implications of dualization for post-industrial welfare politics. 2
