Has three decades of comparative public policy scholarship been focusing on the wrong question?

The essential argument of this paper is that, despite the work of many pioneering scholars, the original agenda of those who came to comparative public policy with a view to demonstrating that the functioning of democratic politics makes a difference remains substantially unfulfilled. The substance of that agenda was to show that choices made through the ballot box influenced not only what governments did, but also had implications for important aspects of the lives of the citizens making those choices. One important reason for this failure was that much of the emergent quantitative literature came to focus on differences in government outputs as proxies for whether such differences translated into a diversity of real outcomes. In effect, the literature tried to settle the question of whether politics matters by showing how politics shapes what governments do without asking the no less important question: does government matter? This paper seeks to model a diverse range of outcomes with a view to assessing the impact of both political and government spending and taxing variables. On the basis of that assessment, I argue that the challenge for the next generation of political science informed comparative policy research is to go beyond an examination of the link between political choice and the outputs of government to ask questions about - and ideally to begin to map - the linkages between the things governments do and the lives their citizens experience.Das zentrale Argument dieses Papiers lautet, dass die ursprüngliche Agenda der vergleichenden Staatstätigkeitsforschung, wonach politische Faktoren Unterschiede in der Staatstätigkeit bedingen, im Wesentlichen unerfüllt blieb. Kern dieser Agenda war es zu zeigen, dass Wahlentscheidungen nicht nur Staatstätigkeit beeinflussen, sondern auch Auswirkungen auf wichtige Lebensbereiche der Bürger haben, die diese Entscheidung treffen. Ein wichtiger Grund für ihr Scheitern war, dass ein Großteil der quantitativen Literatur Unterschiede in den Outputs als Proxy für unterschiedliche Outcomes in den Blick nahm. Tatsächlich versuchte die Literatur die Frage zu beantworten, ob Politik einen Unterschied macht, indem man zeigte, wie Politik Staatstätigkeit beeinflusst, ohne sich die nicht weniger wichtige Frage zu stellen, ob Staatstätigkeit einen Unterschied macht. Dieses Papier untersucht die Bestimmungsfaktoren einer Reihe unterschiedlicher Outcomeindikatoren. Dabei wird der Einfluss sowohl von politischen Variablen als auch von staatlichen Ausgaben- und Steuerindikatoren untersucht. Auf Basis dieser Untersuchung wird argumentiert, dass die nächste Generation der vergleichenden Policyforschung den Fokus auf Outputindikatoren überwinden und stattdessen die Auswirkungen von Staatstätigkeit auf die Lebenswirklichkeit der Bürger in das Zentrum der Analyse rücken sollte

Decentralization and the post-war political economy

This paper uses cross-national data for 21 OECD nations to examine whether there is any evidence of a connection between measures of political and fiscal decentralization and the major, long-term, performance parameters of the post-war political economy. The findings of what is necessarily an exploratory analysis of a wide rage of policy outcomes suggest that low levels of fiscal centralization appear to have restrained post-war inflationary pressures and gone along with higher rates of post-war economic growth. However, no evidence is found to link fiscal decentralization with post-war labour market performance. While the balance of evidence indicates that measures of political decentralization do not have any significant impact on macroeconomic outcomes, the study confirms the standard finding in the literature that federalism and other decentralized constitutional arrangements impede the expansion of the socially protective state

The growth of the post-war public expenditure state: long-term trajectories and recent trends

This Working Paper has two principal objectives. The first is to describe the main trajectories of development of public expenditure aggregates in OECD countries during the period 1960-2001. The second is to provide a more detailed analysis of expenditure trends in these countries in the period since 1980, with a view to establishing the extent and sources of expenditure retrenchment in this latter period. The aggregates examined include total outlays of general government, total social expenditure and the core spending of general government, including expenditures on defence, public order, education, general public services, economic affairs, community services and environmental protection. The headline stories of the general survey of expenditure trajectories include the massive overall expansion of public spending, the declining importance of military expenditures and the increased salience of spending on social policy objectives and, most recently, a shift within the latter category from cash benefit spending to spending on service provision. Significant findings of the analysis of trends include the pronounced convergence of aggregate expenditure levels, the role of slow economic growth in promoting the measured growth of public expenditure and the continuing importance of the partisan complexion of government in shaping spending patterns. The analysis also suggests that post-1980 retrenchment tendencies were restricted to core spending, were only marginally influenced by developments in the global economy and were driven almost entirely by a conjuncture of high levels of public indebtedness and high real interest rates which is unlikely to be repeated in the near future. --

Prospects for a European welfare state: Lessons from welfare state development in six OECD-Federations

This paper uses the findings of a very recent major international research collaboration on the impact of federal arrangements on the development of the welfare state to explore the possibilities of progress beyond Europe's present diversity of nation-state welfare standards. These findings - based on the longterm historical experience of the OECD's oldest federations - suggest that federal arrangements tend to slow down welfare state consolidation, but that much depends on the context of historical development. The emergence of bypass mechanisms circumventing federal veto-points is located as the key to welfare progress, and the role of regulation in European integration and the special role of the ECJ as well as that of "the open method of co-ordination" are tentatively identified as possible EU bypass equivalents. --

Towards more comprehensive measures of social support: adding in the impact of taxes and private Spending or netting out the impact of politics on redistribution?

This paper offers a critique and analysis of recent OECD research by Adema and Ladaique identifying the impact of taxes and private benefits on social spending. Using the techniques of multivariate modelling, we show that both gross public and net private expenditures are strongly influenced by partisan incumbency, although in opposite directions, and that the more we net out the effect of taxes, the less politics matters and the more spending is shaped by economic forces. In a second stage of the analysis, we show that the crucial mechanism of welfare state redistribution is the taxation of gross social expenditure and demonstrate that this effect is almost entirely political in nature

Towards more comprehensive measures of social support: adding in the impact of taxes and private spending or netting out the impact of politics on redistribution?

"Eine neue OECD-Studie von Adema und Ladaique schätzt Nettosozialleistungsquoten für 23 OECD-Länder. Mit Hilfe multivariater Analysemethoden untersuchen wir die Determinanten dieser um Steuern und private Sozialausgaben bereinigten Sozialleistungsquoten. Wir zeigen im ersten Teil dieses Arbeitspapiers, dass die Varianz der Bruttoausgabenniveaus und der privaten Sozialausgaben hochgradig von der parteipolitischen Färbung der Regierung beeinflusst wird. Je stärker der Analysefokus von Brutto- zu Nettoausgaben verlagert wird, desto schwächer werden politische Einflüsse auf die Sozialausgabenniveaus, während umgekehrt die Bedeutung ökonomischer Stellgrößen zunimmt. Im zweiten Teil des Papiers zeigen wir, dass die Besteuerung von Sozialleistungen den zentralen Mechanismus für Umverteilungspolitik darstellt und demonstrieren, dass dieser Effekt fast ausschließlich politisch determiniert wird." (Autorenreferat)"This paper offers a critique and analysis of recent OECD research by Adema and Ladaique identifying the impact of taxes and private benefits on social spending. Using the techniques of multivariate modelling, we show that both gross public and net private expenditures are strongly influenced by partisan incumbency, although in opposite directions, and that the more we net out the effect of taxes, the less politics matters and the more spending is shaped by economic forces. In a second stage of the analysis, we show that the crucial mechanism of welfare state redistribution is the taxation of gross social expenditure and demonstrate that this effect is almost entirely political in nature." (author's abstract

The growth of the post-war public expenditure state: long-term trajectories and recent trends

This Working Paper has two principal objectives. The first is to describe the main trajectories of development of public expenditure aggregates in OECD countries during the period 1960-2001. The second is to provide a more detailed analysis of expenditure trends in these countries in the period since 1980, with a view to establishing the extent and sources of expenditure retrenchment in this latter period. The aggregates examined include total outlays of general government, total social expenditure and the core spending of general government, including expenditures on defence, public order, education, general public services, economic affairs, community services and environmental protection. The headline stories of the general survey of expenditure trajectories include the massive overall expansion of public spending, the declining importance of military expenditures and the increased salience of spending on social policy objectives and, most recently, a shift within the latter category from cash benefit spending to spending on service provision. Significant findings of the analysis of trends include the pronounced convergence of aggregate expenditure levels, the role of slow economic growth in promoting the measured growth of public expenditure and the continuing importance of the partisan complexion of government in shaping spending patterns. The analysis also suggests that post-1980 retrenchment tendencies were restricted to core spending, were only marginally influenced by developments in the global economy and were driven almost entirely by a conjuncture of high levels of public indebtedness and high real interest rates which is unlikely to be repeated in the near future

Prospects for a European welfare state : lessons from welfare state development in six OECD-Federations

This paper uses the findings of a very recent major international research collaboration on the impact of federal arrangements on the development of the welfare state to explore the possibilities of progress beyond Europe’s present diversity of nation-state welfare standards. These findings – based on the longterm historical experience of the OECD’s oldest federations – suggest that federal arrangements tend to slow down welfare state consolidation, but that much depends on the context of historical development. The emergence of bypass mechanisms circumventing federal veto-points is located as the key to welfare progress, and the role of regulation in European integration and the special role of the ECJ as well as that of ‘the open method of co-ordination’ are tentatively identified as possible EU bypass equivalents