Left-wing but unwilling to support international redistribution? : explaining public support for fiscal transfers in the EU

The redistribution of fiscal resources from richer to poorer European Union (EU) member states has taken on a new quality in the wake of the Euro crisis. With the creation of the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), fiscal redistribution in the EU has become a particularly contested aspect of European integration. We seek to uncover how ideological orientations shape citizens' attitudes towards international redistribution. In a multi-level analysis of the European Elections Study 2014 we find that voter positions on a cultural ideology dimension are strongly linked to their preference on EU redistribution. At the same time we find that a link between voters' location on an economic left-right scale and their preference for EU redistribution is conditional on whether they expect pecuniary gain from domestic redistribution. Among low-income citizens – those who tend to be the natural beneficiaries of domestic redistribution – a left-leaning position on the economic dimension does not translate into support for EU redistribution. It is only among the subgroup of high-income citizens that a left-leaning disposition translates into support for EU redistribution

Paid and unpaid work:The impact of social policies on the gender division of labour

The varieties of capitalism (VOC) literature has offered one of the most influential explanations for cross-national variation in the gender division of labour. It argues that labour markets, which privilege specific as opposed to general skills, have a negative effect on women’s employment and impede an egalitarian division of household labour. This article revisits one of the most prominent VOC studies: Iversen and Rosenbluth’s empirical analysis of the 1994 International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) survey on gender relations. I argue that a gendered welfare perspective provides an alternative and more compelling explanation for the same outcomes. In my empirical analysis, I re-analyse Iversen and Rosenbluth’s study using the more recent 2002 ISSP survey on gender relations. The empirical results lend little support to the VOC approach and show that a gendered welfare state perspective, measured using a novel summary index of defamilialization, explains the observed outcomes better. The evidence in support for the VOC explanation disappears when controlling for defamilializing social policies. This suggests that a previous VOC work on the gender division of labour has suffered from omitting crucial social policy controls. This article substantiates earlier critiques of VOC that have questioned its usefulness as an explanatory framework for gender-relevant outcomes.</jats:p

Public Policy in Multi-Level Systems: A New Research Agenda for the Study of Regional- Level Policy

While there is a cumulative research program on the causes of decentralization to regional and local governments, research on its policy consequences is less integrated. This article takes stock of the existing research on the policy consequences of decentralisation. It highlights the existence of disparate lines of investigation while pointing to ways in which they can connect. To do so, we review 102articles from 20 top generalist and subfields journals, from 1998-2018. We find that there is an important geographical divide in research traditions: US scholars tend to focus the pressures of competitive ‘race-to-the-bottom’ dynamics or on mechanisms of policy diffusion; comparative and non-US scholars instead emphasise institutional diversity across decentralized countries and drivers of variation in subnational policy choices, including structural and cultural factors, partisanship and vertical and horizontal linkages. In the conclusion, we developfive conclusions that highlight how this sub-field can develop a coherent research program

Evaluating Territorial Authority over Policy Responses to the Crisis: A Comparative Study of the COVID-19 Pandemic

This article examines the allocation of authority over policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in 13 advanced democracies. It introduces a new measurement scheme that allows for a systematic cross-country analysis of authority structures. The paper also tracks changes in territorial arrangements over time to investigate their responsiveness to the evolving nature of the pandemic. The analysis reveals four main patterns, including fluctuating (de)centralisation efforts that mirror changes in the urgency of the crisis, institutional incentives for coordination acting as a functional alternative to centralisation, the influence of broader territorial arrangements, and regional resistance to centralisation in politically charged contexts

Policy-making in multi-level systems: ideology, authority, and education

Most political systems consist of multiple layers. While this fact is widely acknowledged, we know surprisingly little about its implications for policy-making. Most comparative studies still focus exclusively on the national level. We posit that both “methodological nationalism” and “methodological subnationalism” should be avoided. We argue instead that in multilevel systems national and subnational governments jointly affect policy-making. Their respective influence is, however, conditional on the distribution of policy authority. Moreover, we identify power asymmetries, as subnational governments hardly affect policy-making in centralized systems whereas national governments shape subnational policy-making even in decentralized polities. Empirically, we study the case of education policy. Novel data on regional education spending, regional and national governments’ ideology, and regional authority over education in 282 regions in 15 countries over 21 years reveals strong support for the interplay between ideology and the distribution of authority across levels. We conclude by sketching a resulting research agenda

Ideological alignment and the distribution of public expenditures

This article revisits the influential partisan alignment hypothesis, which posits that subnational governments aligned with central governments exhibit higher expenditures. To promote their own and their party's re-election chances, central government politicians allocate more resources to ideologically aligned co-partisans at the subnational level. Consequently, aligned subnational governments exhibit higher expenditures than non-aligned ones. This article examines alignment effects in subnational education spending. Education is a crucial test case because, unlike other expenditures, the allocation of education spending is discretionary and often does not follow precise formulas. Using a novel dataset covering 266 subnational regions in 14 countries over 20 years, we offer the first cross-country analysis of alignment effects. Controlling for rival explanations, the findings reveal alignment effects on subnational education expenditures. Furthermore, political institutions matter, as alignment effects are stronger in countries where subnational governments have more discretion over education policy while lacking their own revenue sources (vertical fiscal imbalance). These findings imply that decentralisation might increase educational and socio-economic inequalities

Policy-Making in Multi-Level Systems: Ideology, Authority, and Education

Most political systems consist of multiple layers. While this fact is widely acknowledged, we know surprisingly little about its implications for policy-making. Most comparative studies still focus exclusively on the national level. We posit that both methodological nationalism and methodological subnationalism should be avoided. We argue instead that in multilevel systems national and subnational governments jointly affect policy-making. Their respective influence is, however, conditional on the distribution of policy authority. Moreover, we identify power asymmetries, as subnational governments hardly affect policy-making in centralized systems whereas national governments shape subnational policy-making even in decentralized polities. Empirically, we study the case of education policy. Novel data on regional education spending, regional and national governments' ideology, and regional authority over education in 282 regions in 15 countries over 21 years reveals strong support for the interplay between ideology and the distribution of authority across levels. We conclude by sketching a resulting research agenda