The Welfare State or the Economy? Preferences, Constituencies, and Strategies for Retrenchment

The assumption that voters systematically defend the welfare state is challenged by recent research showing that parties are on average not punished and sometimes even rewarded for welfare state retrenchment. We work to understand better the micro-foundations for this finding of non-punishment by exploring individuals' preferences over social policy. In particular, we distinguish general support for redistribution from views that existing levels of government spending strain the economy. As voters value economic stability in addition to equality, they are hypothesized to tolerate or support retrenchment when they feel that there are economic costs at stake. Analyzing a sample of 13 European societies with data from the European Social Survey Round 4, our results show that only welfare state supporters who do not believe that the welfare state hampers the economy punish retrenching governments. This finding helps explain the lack of more widespread electoral punishment following retrenchment, though other results also suggest that retrenchment involves a rather delicate process of juggling the preferences of diverse constituencie

Education policy and the consequences for labor market integration in Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands

The increased risk of skill obsolescence calls for new types of education policy that facilitate learning throughout the life course. I build two indices in order to express the types of education policy required to ameliorate this increased risk as well as explore variation in the degree to which different countries succeed at developing education policy to address this risk. The first index is called skill acquisition and includes education policies that invest in individuals' cognitive skills and expands educational opportunities. The second index is called skill transparency and aims at capturing the degree to which skills are certified in a transparent way as well as the extent to which complementarities between qualifications are recognized within the certification system. Analyzing the origins behind the country rankings on these two indices, the results from the fuzzy set and regression analysis underscore a Scandinavian path to high rankings on both indices buttressed by the key presence of high left party incumbency and a powerful state. With respect to the skill transparency index, an additional path appears plausible consisting of strong right party incumbency combined with relatively well-organized social partners and left parties. Also, Christian democratic incumbency appears particularly hazardous for the development of policies that secure the transparent certification of skills. Examining the cases of Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands in greater detail provides evidence first for the role of the various political factors described above in influencing the development of education policy. Three thematic groups of education policies are considered, the comprehensive school movement, continuing education, and active labor market policies. Second, firm interviews regarding firms' involvement in active labor market policies help to delve deeper into the mechanisms by which mutually beneficial policy outcomes are facilitated or made more difficult. Although Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands have all used active labor market policies to reintegrate workers into the labor market, the types of policies each country has pursued as well as the degree of investment that these policies have both demanded and received from firms varied

Small Suburbs, Large Lots: How the Scale of Land-Use Regulation Affects Housing Affordability, Equity, and the Climate

Housing costs in major coastal metropolitan areas nationwide have skyrocketed, impacting people, the economy, and the environment. Landuse regulation, controlled primarily at the local level, plays a major role in determining housing production. In response to this mounting housing crisis, scholars, policymakers, and commentators are debating whether greater state involvement in local land-use decision-making is the best path forward. We argue here that there are good reasons to believe that continuing on the current path—with local control of land-use regulation as it is— will lead to persistent underproduction of housing. The benefits of housing production are primarily regional, including improved job markets, increased socioeconomic mobility, and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. But the costs associated with producing more housing are often local, felt at the neighborhood level. Local governments whose voters are impacted by the local negative impacts of housing and will usually have less incentive to consider those regional, and national, benefits and approve housing. Recent political science, planning, economics, and legal research shows that smaller local jurisdictions tend to produce less housing, and when political institutions decentralize control over housing to the sublocal (e.g., neighborhood) scale, less housing is approved. A central theory in academic research in land-use regulation and local government law has been the idea that competition among highly fragmented local governments can produce more efficient outcomes in public services and land-use regulation, even if there may be significant inequities across local jurisdictions in outcomes. Our analysis shows that this theory no longer accurately describes how fragmented local governance affects economic efficiency. Indeed, our analysis makes clear that fragmented local governance is both inequitable and inefficient, at least in the context of land-use regulation. Our analysis also raises questions about local government law scholarship contending that increased local governmental power can effectively address the dysfunctions of metropolitan areas in the United States. We present a range of policy proposals to address the problems we identify. First, greater state intervention in local land-use regulation is necessary. While a greater state role need not (and probably should not) entirely displace local control, it is essential to ensure that the larger-scale benefits of housing are appropriately considered. Second, we note that the highly fragmented local land-use regulatory system imposes challenges for housing production, in part, because variation among local regulatory practices creates barriers to entry for new housing across jurisdictions. Accordingly, we advocate for a state role to increase the standardization of local land-use regulatory tools as a key step to help advance greater housing production, even where local control is maintained

Lesions of retrosplenial cortex spare immediate-early gene activity in related limbic regions in the rat

The retrosplenial cortex forms part of a network of cortical and subcortical structures that have particular importance for spatial learning and navigation in rodents. This study examined how retrosplenial lesions affect activity in this network by visualising the expression of the immediate-early genes c-fos and zif268 after exposure to a novel location. Groups of rats with extensive cytotoxic lesions (areas 29 and 30) and rats with lesions largely confined to area 30 (dysgranular cortex) were compared with their respective control animals for levels of c-fos expression measured by immunohistochemistry. These cortical lesions had very limited effects on distal c-fos activity. Evidence of a restricted reduction in c-fos activity was seen in the septal dentate gyrus (superior blade) but not in other hippocampal and parahippocampal subareas, nor in the anterior cingulate and prelimbic cortices. Related studies examined zif268 activity in those cases with combined area 29 and 30 lesions. The only clear evidence for reduced zif268 activity following retrosplenial cell loss came from the septal CA3 area. The confined impact of retrosplenial tissue loss is notable as, by the same immediate-early gene measures, retrosplenial cortex is itself highly sensitive to damage in related limbic areas, showing a marked c-fos and zif268 hypoactivity across all of its subareas. This asymmetry in covert pathology may help to explain the apparent disparity between the severity of learning deficits after retrosplenial cortex lesions and after lesions in either the hippocampus or the anterior thalamic nuclei