Social democracy after the Third Way: restoration or renewal?

Given the ill-fated political experience with the Third Way, one would not expect social democratic parties that return to office after long opposition spells to take up again the liberal, supply-side oriented policies that were so typical for the Third Way. A case study of Denmark, however, shows that that is precisely what happens and that it has the same disastrous electoral consequences. Taking a comparative perspective and learning from the Danish experience, we conclude that other future social democratic governments are likely to pursue many elements of the updated Third Way we found in the Danish case

Interests, Identity and Political Allegiance in the European Union

In this paper, we take up a question, which has a longstanding tradition within the field of European Union (EU) studies: What explains the variation in public support for European integration and/or the European Union? There are two dominant explanations of EU support: the utilitarian self-interest and the national identity perspectives. The former viewpoint stresses that citizens are more likely to support integration, if it results in a net benefit to the national economy or their own pocketbook. The latter perspective highlights the importance of feelings of national identity in shaping support for European integration. Drawing on the concept of (double) allegiance, we argue that there are theoretical reasons to combine the interest- and identity-based perspectives into one single explanatory framework. Support for supra-national institutions depends on the extent to which such institutions allow national political elites to provide security and well-being. The more citizens perceive that integration threatens their (economic, social-psychological and/or socio-economic) security and well-being, the less they are likely to support the EU. We find empirical evidence that interest- and identity-based explanations should indeed not be seen as alternative explanations, but as perspective that capture different sides of the same coin.Session 1: Governance in the European Unio

Expansion and Fragmentation

Is the end of the nation-state approaching, now that the international economy takes less and less notice of borders between countries and the European Union has already acquired so much political power? What does national autonomy mean when governments delegate any number of powers to international organizations? Internationalization leads to political change, and the position of the nation-state appears to be undergoing a radical process of erosion. The surprising conclusion of this book is that the political significance of the state will not be lost. The analyses show that both expansion and fragmentation of political power are characteristics of fundamental political change. While it is true that the state is delegating authority and that internationalization is limiting autonomy, the state is also finding new forms of cooperation and coordination, both nationally and internationally, to preserve and even to strengthen its power and autonomy. Contrary to widely held assumptions, the idea of a progressive weakening of the nationstate does not prove tenable

The effects of welfare state universalism on migrant integration

This paper investigates how and why welfare state universalism can shape the integration of migrants into the national community. Universalism is broadly regarded as central to the integrative and solidarity-building potential of welfare states, but we argue that the traditional approach to understanding the concept is fraught with inconsistencies. Rather than comparing welfare states using the classical universalist/selectivist dichotomy, we suggest that they should be thought of as embodying various 'packages' of universalist traits – all of which are unified by their connection to a core, self-sustaining logic of solidarity. A comparison of Canadian and Danish universalism allows us to draw out how (indiscriminate/selectivist) 'community perks' traits and (inclusive/exclusive) 'community scope' ones may interact in unexpected ways. This, in turn, helps us better understand how and why 'classically universalist' Denmark is facing threats to solidarity and migrant integration that are much more intense than those found in 'classically selectivist' Canada

Motive attribution and the moral politics of the welfare state

This article explores the moral politics of the welfare state and the social conflicts that underlie them. We argue that existing research on the moralism of redistributive and social policy preferences is overly one-dimensional, with a longstanding concentration on attitudes toward welfare state beneficiaries. To widen our understanding of the phenomenon, we introduce the concept of motive attribution: that is, how people answer the question “what drives others to take the positions that they hold?” Doing so allows us to shift the subject of moralistic attitudes, with a move toward uncovering what citizens think of those who hold a given social policy stance. The article then lays out a first systematic overview of motive attributions using an original dataset built from nationally representative surveys conducted in ten Western democracies. Comparing responses across these countries, we draw out important cross-national differences in ascribed motives, including within welfare state regime types

Political parties and social groups: New perspectives and data on group and policy appeals

This article contributes to the literature on party appeals to social groups by introducing a new dataset on group and policy appeals in Scandinavia (2009–2015). In addition to coding to what social groups parties appeal, we collected information on what policies parties offer for the groups they mention and what goals and instruments they specify for such policies. The latter advance makes it possible to present new insights on the extent to which group appeals are actually substantial and meaningful. We find that left, centre, and right parties appeal to broad demographic categories rather than class. There are almost no appeals to the middle class, although the frequent reference to a category ‘all’ can be interpreted as a functional equivalent for middle class appeals. Finally, parties clearly still make substantial policy proposals and address concrete policy problems, but with only small differences in such appeals across the left-right spectrum

Peeping at the corpus – What is really going on behind the equality and welfare items of the Manifesto project?

The Comparative Manifestos Project (CMP) data set quantifies how much parties emphasize certain topics and positions and is very popular in the study of political parties. The data set is also increasingly applied in comparative political economy and welfare state studies that use the welfare-specific items rather than the CMP’s left–right scale to test hypotheses on the impact of political parties on social policies, (in)equality and the welfare state. But do these items provide a valid basis for descriptive and causal inferences? What do the items precisely capture? To answer these questions on concept validity, we use the new manifesto corpus data for German parties 2002–2013 and, to provide a further test, for US parties 2004–2012. Corpus data are the digitalized, originally hand-annotated and coded texts of electoral programmes. We assess the validity of the codings directly at the level of quasi-sentences by re-categorizing and subcategorizing the originally coded statements on equality, social justice and welfare state expansion. Although concept validity concerns about the data seem exaggerated, we find that theoretically relevant and meaningful variation is ‘hidden’ behind the original categories. Hence, our approach allows researchers to assess the substantive meaning of the CMP data directly, and we offer an efficient new strategy for testing more specific hypotheses on the impact of political parties on policy

The illusion of class in welfare state politics?

Social class, with its potentially pivotal influence on both policy-making and electoral outcomes tied to the welfare state, is a frequent fixture in academic and political discussions about social policy. Yet these discussions presuppose that class identity is in fact tied up with distinct attitudes toward the welfare state. Using original data from ten surveys fielded in the United States and Western Europe, we investigate the relationship between class and general stances toward the welfare state as a whole, with the goal of determining whether class affects how individuals understand and relate to the welfare state. Our findings suggest that, although class markers are tied to objective and subjective positional considerations about one's place in the society, they nevertheless do not seem to shape stances toward the welfare state. What is more, this is equally true across the various welfare state types, as we find no evidence that so-called ‘middle-class welfare states’ engender more positive middle-class attitudes than other regimes. Based on our analysis, we propose that researchers would do better to focus on household income rather than class; while income may not be a perfect predictor of attitudes toward the welfare state, it is a markedly better one than class

Yardsticks of inequality: Preferences for redistribution in advanced democracies

This article explores how preferences for redistribution among voters are affected by the structure of inequality. There are strong theoretical reasons to believe that some voter segments matter more than others, not least the so-called median-income voter, but surprisingly little attention has been paid to directly analysing distinct income groups’ redistributive preferences. In addition, while much of the previous literature has focused on broad levels of inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, it is likely that individuals respond to different types of inequality in different ways. To rectify this gap, we use data from the European Social Survey and Eurostat to examine the interactive effect of income deciles and various measures of inequality. Results suggest that inequality especially affects the middle-income groups – that is, the assumed median-income voters. Moreover, not all inequality matters equally: it is inequality vis-à-vis those around the 80th percentile that shapes redistributive preferences

Policies for older volunteers: A study of Germany and Italy, 1990-2008

Older people increase their well-being and contribute to the community when they volunteer. Therefore, policy-makers sometimes consider supporting older volunteers. However, they reach different conclusions on whether they should introduce policies for older volunteers, and on what policy would be the most suitable. This article studies how policies for older volunteers emerged in Germany and Italy, both countries having one of the oldest populations in the world. It explores the political discourse on older volunteers, and how this discourse translates into policies. To do this, the article presents data collected in expert interviews and document analysis. Findings show that German policy-makers stress the contribution of volunteering to older people's well-being and have introduced policies for older volunteers. Italian policy-makers, in contrast, frame older volunteers as social service providers and have decided not to single out specific age groups in their policies for volunteers. Moreover, the policies are influenced by the policy-makers' perceptions and path-dependencies, meaning policies and institutions that were introduced in the past. These findings suggest that whether or not policies for older volunteers emerge depends less on the characteristics of the older population and more on the society and its political traditions.Peer reviewe