Partisan politics in corporate tax competition

This paper studies the effects of political factors, mainly partisanship, on corporate taxes in the past 30 years - a period of intensifying competitive pressure in Europe. Extending the Zodrow-Mieszkowski model by decision-makers who have ideological preferences yields the hypothesis that left-wing leaders set higher corporate tax rates. In the empirical analysis, we introduce a sophisticated measure of ideology derived from content analysis of party manifestos into the literature dealing with partisan effects on tax policy. We can confirm our main hypothesis, but we also find evidence that this partisan effect declines in the course of time. Moreover, we are able to reveal that this effect is mainly driven by the legislatures' stance on welfare policies. Finally, we show that a higher degree of government fragmentation, as well as the leadership of a head of state with an educational background in law counteracts the general tendency to lower tax rates. --company taxation,tax competition,political ideology,partisan politics

Local politicians take the party affiliation of directly elected mayors into account when forming coalitions

The UK now has a number of Directly Elected Local Authority Mayors, as well as the elected Mayor of London. But the extra layer of governance (and accountability) has implications for coalition formation at the local level. Drawing on research carried out in Germany, Martin Gross and Marc Debus argue that local politicians take the party affiliation of directly elected mayors into account when forming coalitions at the local level

Partisan politics in corporate tax competition

This paper studies the effects of political factors, mainly partisanship, on corporate taxes in the past 30 years – a period of intensifying competitive pressure in Europe. Extending the Zodrow-Mieszkowski model by decision-makers who have ideological preferences yields the hypothesis that left-wing leaders set higher corporate tax rates. In the empirical analysis, we introduce a sophisticated measure of ideology derived from content analysis of party manifestos into the literature dealing with partisan effects on tax policy. We can confirm our main hypothesis, but we also find evidence that this partisan effect declines in the course of time. Moreover, we are able to reveal that this effect is mainly driven by the legislatures’ stance on welfare policies. Finally, we show that a higher degree of government fragmentation, as well as the leadership of a head of state with an educational background in law counteracts the general tendency to lower tax rates

Evidence from Germany suggests that parties are influenced by voters’ preferences in their attempts to form coalitions

How important are the preferences of voters in coalition negotiations? Marc Debus and Jochen Müller assess the potential governments that could have been formed at the state level in Germany from 1990-2009, and relate these to the coalition preferences of voters. They find that there is a reciprocal relationship between parties and the electorate, with voters more likely to support coalitions based on pre-electoral alliances, and parties more likely to support coalitions favoured by their supporters

Positions on and issue emphasis of European integration and EU Cohesion policy: Analysing (sub-)national party manifestos

One key element of the European Union’s (EU) attempt to foster citizens’ identification with the EU has been (and still is) its Cohesion policy (CP). This policy targets regions and cities across the EU with the overall goal of reducing economic and social disparities across regions and countries and improving citizens’ quality of life. Since CP accounts for almost one-third of the total EU budget in 2014-20 it might attract the attention of political parties—both at the national and regional level—to promote and communicate this policy among citizens, in particular by referring to potentially financial benefits of EU structural funds in their election manifestos. In this contribution, we first map national parties’ policy positions on European integration and CP in the COHESIFY project countries: Cyprus, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Poland, Romania, Slovenia, Spain, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (UK). Secondly, we estimate, for the first time, sub-national parties’ positions on these two policy dimensions in nine European regions—Andalusia, Baden-Wuerttemberg, Castile and León, Flevoland, Limburg, Lombardy, Scotland, Thuringia, and Wales— using the fully-automated computerised ‘Wordscores’ approach. Thirdly, we manually extract all EU-related information in national and sub-national parties’ election manifestos via an original coding scheme, thus distinguishing between general mentions of the EU and more specific statements on several EU funds. Finally, we draw comparative conclusions about political positions and issue emphasis on the EU and Cohesion policy in the manifestos across cases, territorial levels and EU funding allocated to countries and regions. The empirical results show that in all countries and regions under study parties differ more in their views on European integration than on CP. Yet, national parties’ emphasis of European issues in their manifestos is clearly correlated with the EU funding per capita a country receives

Annähern oder Distanzieren? Strategische Positionierung von FDP, VdU und FPÖ zwischen 1949 und 2002

'Seit 1949 verfügen Deutschland und Österreich über ideologisch wie numerisch ähnliche Parteiensysteme. Während jedoch in der Bundesrepublik Koalitionen aus großer und kleiner Partei die Regel waren, bestanden in Österreich vorwiegend große Koalitionen. Ziel dieses Aufsatzes soll sein, durch eine Kombination von koalitions- und spieltheoretischen sowie historischen Ansätzen die Ursachen für die unterschiedliche Strategie und Stellung von FDP, VdU und FPÖ im jeweiligen Koalitionsspiel zu bestimmen. Die empirische Analyse von Wahlprogrammen zeigt, dass die FDP häufig programmatische Positionen einnimmt, die der ihres gewünschten Koalitionspartners widersprechen, wohingegen VdU bzw. FPÖ sich inhaltlich vielfach der Partei annähern, die Signale zur Bildung einer 'kleinen Koalition' aussendet. Das Eintreten dieser strategischen Bewegungen hängt jedoch davon ab, welcher ideologische Flügel zum Zeitpunkt einer Wahl die jeweilige Partei dominiert.' (Autorenreferat)'Since 1949, Germany and Austria have similar party systems. Yet, in Germany coalitions between a large and a small party had been typical, whereas Austria was predominantly governed by coalitions formed between the two large parties. The goal of this essay is to identify and explain the different strategies and positions of German FDP and Austrian VdU and FPÖ in the respective coalition game. This is done through a combination of coalition- and game theoretical as well as historical approaches. An empirical analysis of election manifestos shows that the FDP often holds programmatic positions that are different from those of her favoured coalition partner, whereas VdU and FPÖ often try to close the programmatic gap between themselves and that large party, that is the most likely coalition partner. The appearance of such strategic movements, however, depends on which ideological intra-party wing dominates the respective party.' (author's abstract

Advocates of climate action? The age of members of parliament and their activity in legislative debates on climate change

Parliamentary debates are an important stage in the process of designing new policies and play an important role for discussing the policy reactions to exogenous events like the COVID-19 pandemic or long-term developments like climate change. We combine theories on vote-seeking strategies of political actors with theoretical accounts that highlight the impact of personal characteristics of politicians and argue that in particular younger Members of Parliament (MPs) should put more emphasis on issues related to climate change and its consequences than older MPs. We test our hypotheses on the basis of an original dataset covering all parliamentary debates that focus on issues related to climate change in the German Bundestag from 2013 until 2021, thus concentrating on a time period when climate change became a highly salient issue among the German public. We find that the age of MPs matters: the younger MPs are, the more speeches they contribute to parliamentary debates related to climate policy. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT: [Image: see text

Who runs in the end? New evidence on the effects of gender, ethnicity and intersectionality on candidate selection

Candidate selection within parties is a key stage in the political process and provides an important frame for the degree of representation of social groups in parliaments. We seek to develop a better understanding of the effect of intersectionality on candidate selection processes. We do so by examining the effect of candidates’ key socio-demographic characteristics, like their gender and ethnic background, on their chances of getting nominated by their party. We argue that features of the ideological background of the respective nominating party matter for the chances that women and aspirants with an ethnic background win the nomination as their party’s district candidate. We make use of novel data from the 2021 German federal election that provides detailed information on the candidate selection processes of all major parties in the 299 election districts. By doing so, we apply existing theoretical expectations to an untested case and find that female competitors and aspirants with an ethnic background face difficulties being nominated, in particular in the case of parties with rather traditionalist societal policy positions. We also find that intersectionality matters: female aspirants of ethnic minorities are even less likely to be nominated by ideologically traditional parties