Employer Preferences and Social Policy: Business and the Development of Job Security Regulations in Germany since World War I

This article examines the role of business in the historical development of job security regulations in Germany from their creation in the inter-war period to the dawn of the crisis of the 'German Model' in the 1980s. It contrasts the varieties of capitalism approach, which sees business as protagonists, or at least consenters, in the development of job security regulations with a conflict-oriented approach, which sees the labour movement as protagonists and business as antagonists in the development of job security regulations. The empirical analysis is based on primary and secondary sources and shows that at no point in time German employers preferred strict over flexible job security regulations. Quite the contrary, high levels of job security regulations have been forced upon employers by radicalized labour movements in periods of business weakness in the aftermath of both World Wars.job security regulations, Germany, institutional change, varieties of capitalism, power resources, industrial relations

Electoral reform: the fine print matters

How and when does a dominant party reform the electoral system? And how do they shape the details of that reform? In new research on the case of Swiss cantons, André Walter and Patrick Emmenegger find that self-interest by a dominant party can be crucial to determining how proportional the new system actually is

Majority protection: The origins of distorted proportional representation

Not all proportional representation (PR) systems are equally proportional. Some PR systems favour large parties and are thus ’distorted’. What explains the origins of distorted PR? Research on the adoption of PR has identified both consensual and conflict-ridden roads to PR. We argue that these two roads to PR do not lead to the same outcome. We expect the adoption of PR by consensus to result in less proportional PR systems compared to cases in which PR is forced upon powerful parties. Empirically, we find no evidence that powerful parties introduced PR to grant minority groups better political representation. Instead, we show that when PR was adopted with the support of the most powerful party, reforms often resulted in distorted PR and small seat losses for the most powerful party

Ethnic Minorities, Interstate War, and Popular Support for Fiscal Capacity Development

Do ethnic majorities and minorities have diverging preferences for fiscal capacity? Do these preferences converge during national emergencies such as interstate war? In this paper, we provide evidence from a natural experiment to demonstrate that politically salient minority-majority divisions undermine the development of fiscal capacity. In addition, we show that the pressure of interstate war is insufficient to supersede differences in support for the expansion of state’s capacity for taxation between majority and minority groups. More specifically, we employ a regression discontinuity design using a natural border that separates linguistic groups and municipality outcomes of a popular vote on the introduction of direct taxation at federal level in Switzerland during the First World War. The findings suggest that salient minority-majority divisions have a negative effect on the expansion of states’ capacity for taxation even during periods of interstate war

When dominant parties adopt proportional representation: the mysterious case of Belgium

As the first country to introduce proportional representation (PR), Belgium has attracted considerable attention. Yet, we find the existing explanations for the 1899 breakthrough lacking. At the time of reform, the Catholic Party was politically dominant, advantaged by the electoral system, and facing reformist Socialists. Nevertheless, they single-handedly changed the electoral system and lost 26 seats in the first election under PR. We argue that the Catholics had good reasons to adopt PR. Majoritarian rules tend to create high levels of uncertainty because they provide incentives for non-dominant parties to cooperate. Such electoral coalitions are facilitated by multidimensional policy spaces that make electoral coalitions other than between nonsocialist parties possible. PR reduces the effectiveness of cooperation between non-dominant parties, but such certainty comes at a price. In addition, in the presence of dominant parties, divisions over electoral system reform often result in intra-party conflicts that may be more decisive than inter-party conflicts

Partisan districting and the adoption of proportional representation: gerrymandering and its discontents

Electoral engineering strategies in majoritarian electoral systems, in particular the possibility to contain insurgent parties by manipulating electoral districts for partisan gain, are key determinants of parties’ positions on the adoption of proportional representation (PR). Providing both qualitative and quantitative evidence, this paper demonstrates that partisan districting can be an effective strategy to protect incumbent parties’ dominant political positions. In addition, it shows how insurgent parties push for the adoption of PR to end the practice of partisan districting. Finally, it demonstrates that incumbents – in the face of increasing electoral threats – cling to the existing majoritarian system if partisan districting allows them to influence vote-seat distortions in their favor. Together, these findings suggest that the possibility to contain insurgent parties by means of partisan districting is an important but overlooked alternative to the adoption of PR. Moreover, by demonstrating that vote-seat distortions moderate the relationship between district-level electoral threats and legislators’ support for PR adoption, this paper offers an important corrective to Stein Rokkan’s influential electoral threat thesis

Religion and the gender vote gap: women's changed political preferences from the 1970s to 2010

"For many years women tended to vote more conservative than men (the ‘old’ gender vote gap), but since the 1980s this gap in many countries has shifted direction: now women in many countries are more likely to support left parties than men of the same age, in the same income bracket, and at the same educational level (the ‘new’ gender vote gap). The literature largely agrees on a set of political-economic factors explaining the change in women’s political orientation: changed employment patterns, women’s higher educational achievements, and higher divorce rates. These trends turned women into supporters of generous social programs that promise to ‘de-familialize’ services formerly provided privately within the family. In this paper, we demonstrate that these conventional political-economic factors fall short in explaining the old gender vote gap. We may therefore also harbor doubts whether they provide us with a full story for the new gender vote gap. Instead, we highlight the importance of religion for the gendered pattern of voting behavior that we observe. We argue that where vote choice expressed preferences on a non-economic, i.e. mainly religious issue dimension, parties in the past could afford – at least to some extent – ignoring voters’ socio-economic interests. Given that surveys show us a constantly higher degree of religiosity among women and a relatively persistent and strong impact of religion on vote choice, religion can indeed, we argue, explain a substantial part of the old and new gender vote gap." (author's abstract

Landholding Inequality, Social Control, and Mass Opposition to Suffrage Extension

Does landholding inequality undermine democratization? Recent contributions have challenged the argument that landholding elites oppose suffrage extension if geographically fixed assets are unequally distributed. We advance research on this long-standing question by exploiting exogenous variance to reinvestigate the relationship. Using multiple instruments, we find that landholding inequality decreases support for suffrage extension. By focusing on traditional patterns of social control, we explore an empirically neglected mechanism linking landholding inequality and democratization. Taking advantage of four direct democratic votes between 1866 and 1877 in Switzerland, we demonstrate that landholding inequality also influences the political preferences of ordinary citizens who do not control these resources. This paper shows that high levels of landholding inequality provide local elites with the incentive and the means to align the local population's voting behaviour with their political goals. Supplementary analyses using qualitative and quantitative data further substantiate this social control mechanism