Who are the outsiders and what do they want? Welfare state preferences in dualized societies

This paper makes three contributions. First, it presents a new conceptualization and measurement of outsider-status, which is based on social class and which takes into account that the category of outsiders is composed differently in different countries, depending on labor markets and welfare states. Second, it argues theoretically and shows empirically that the class-based measure of insider-and outsider status has a stronger explanatory power with regard to individual-level welfare preferences than the measure based on labor market status. And third, it demonstrates empirically that dualization, combined with skill-levels, shapes people’s preferences with regard to different welfare policies: Outsiders have stronger preferences for redistribution and for social investment than insiders. The analyses are based on micro-level ISSP data.labour contract; political economy; social policy; unemployment; welfare state

Democratic conflict and polarization: healthy or harmful?

Several developments over the past decade in Western democracies have sparked worries about political stability. Among them, the rise of radical political parties, heated polarization around questions of immigration, nationalism, or social liberalism, and – in some instances – even attacks on democratic institutions, stand out. However, conflict and choice between clearly distinctive alternative ideas of how societies and economies should be governed are at the heart of democracy. Democracy needs competition and conflict. But where is the line between healthy and harmful conflict and polarization? In this paper, we explain that an interpretation of today’s state of democratic conflict as chaotic, fragmented or volatile is misleading. Rather, Western democracies are in a process of a fundamental restructuring of the main political dividing lines: a new social cleavage between universalistic and particularistic ideas of social, economic, and political organization, between openness and closure, has been emerging over the past decades. This conflict is rooted in social groups defined by education, occupation, and territory, it relates to underlying collective identities on both sides, and it will dominate democratic party competition for the foreseeable future. It is not per se harmful to democracy, but reflects genuinely different visions of desirable social order. However, under certain conditions, it can turn on democracy itself. The last part of this paper then discusses the functional and dysfunctional implications of polarized political conflict for democracy. To what extent is conflict and polarization healthy and under what conditions is it likely to endanger the very legitimacy and institutional stability of democracies? Building on existing knowledge about the dynamics of polarization, we discuss political and institutional means to contain polarization and to protect democratic stability

Family Policy

Family policy has become an increasingly important policy area in Switzerland since the 1990s. Benefits and services to families have undergone profound transformations. Some reforms became possible because family policy was increasingly defined not only as social policy but also as social investment policy promoting employment and human capital formation. This ambiguity enabled reforms to be supported by heterogeneous reform coalitions, even if long-term coalitions remain unstable and depend on the specific reform proposal. Despite these changes, Swiss family policy is still underdeveloped and falls behind that of other continental European countries. Government spending on family policy is low by international standards, and the use of formal childcare is strongly stratified by income. Important factors contributing to this slow pace of family policy modernization in Switzerland are the decentralized distribution of competences with different levels of government and the use of various direct democratic instruments to prevent or delay reform initiatives at different levels of governance. Moreover, the party system’s increasing political polarization slows down reform efforts and undermines reform coalitions between socially progressive and economically liberal forces. In the face of these challenges, the adaptation of family policy to changing social and economic needs has become a litmus test for the reform capacity of the Swiss welfare state

The COVID-crisis as an opportunity for welfare recalibration? Panel-data evidence on the effect of the COVID-crisis on welfare preferences in Spain, Germany, and Sweden

The reform capacity of welfare states to adapt to the needs of post-industrial labour markets has been a key question of the welfare literature for the last two decades. In a context of austerity, such adaptations (retrenchment or recalibration) are notoriously difficult because of extremely high levels of support for existing policies, particularly old age pensions. We investigate how the recent economic shock caused by the COVID-pandemic has changed social policy preferences in three West European countries (Germany, Sweden, Spain). Relying on original panel data observing the relative support for social policies before and during the crisis, we show that support for old age pensions has dropped substantially relative to other social policies. This drop can be observed in all three countries and among all ideological and age groups. The drop is strongest among current and soon-to-be pensioners who in turn increased support for benefits to the working-age population. At the expense of pensions, the economic shock has especially boosted support for active labour market policies and (in Germany) childcare services. This shift of support from pensions to social investment policies might have opened up a window of opportunity for recalibrating welfare reforms

The COVID-crisis as an opportunity for welfare recalibration? Panel-data evidence on the effect of the COVID-crisis on welfare preferences in Spain, Germany, and Sweden

The reform capacity of welfare states to adapt to the needs of post-industrial labour markets has been a key question of the welfare literature for the last two decades. In a context of austerity, such adaptations (retrenchment or recalibration) are notoriously difficult because of extremely high levels of support for existing policies, particularly old age pensions. We investigate how the recent economic shock caused by the COVID-pandemic has changed social policy preferences in three West European countries (Germany, Sweden, Spain). Relying on original panel data observing the relative support for social policies before and during the crisis, we show that support for old age pensions has dropped substantially relative to other social policies. This drop can be observed in all three countries and among all ideological and age groups. The drop is strongest among current and soon-to-be pensioners who in turn increased support for benefits to the working-age population. At the expense of pensions, the economic shock has especially boosted support for active labour market policies and (in Germany) childcare services. This shift of support from pensions to social investment policies might have opened up a window of opportunity for recalibrating welfare reforms

High-skilled outsiders? Labor market vulnerability, education and welfare state preferences

Recent research has established that employment risk shapes social policy preferences. However, risk is often conceptualized as an alternative measure of the socio-economic status. We show that employment risk and socio-economic status are distinct, crosscutting determinants of social policy preferences. More specifically, we analyze the policy preferences of high-skilled labor market outsiders as a cross-pressured group. We first establish that labor market vulnerability has spread well into the more highly educated segments of the population. We then show that the effect of labor market vulnerability on social policy preferences even increases with higher educational attainment. We conclude that that labor market risk and educational status are not interchangeable and that the high skilled are particularly sensitive to the experience of labor market risk. Thereby, our findings point to a potential cross-class alliance between more highly and lower skilled vulnerable individuals in support of a redistributive and activating welfare state. Thus, they have far-reaching implications for our understanding of both the politicization of insider/outsider divides and the politics of welfare suppor

Aspiration Versus Apprehension: Economic Opportunities and Electoral Preferences

Recent studies take increasingly refined views of how socioeconomic conditions influence political behaviour. We add to this literature by exploring how voters' prospective evaluations of long-term economic and social opportunities relate to electoral contestation versus the stabilization of the political-economic system underpinning the knowledge society. Using survey data from eight West European countries, we show that positive prospects are associated with higher support for mainstream parties (incumbents and opposition) and lower support for radical parties on all levels of material well-being. Our results support the idea that ‘aspirational voters’ with positive evaluations of opportunities (for themselves or their children) represent an important stabilizing force in advanced democratic capitalism. However, we also highlight the importance of radical party support among ‘apprehensive voters’, who are economically secure but perceive a lack of long-term opportunities. To assess the implications of these findings, we discuss the relative importance of these groups across different countries

The politics of trade-offs: studying the dynamics of welfare state reform with conjoint experiments

Welfare state reform in times of austerity is notoriously difficult because most citizens oppose retrenchment of social benefits. Governments, thus, tend to combine cutbacks with selective benefit expansions, thereby creating trade-offs: to secure new advantages, citizens must accept painful cutbacks. Prior research has been unable to assess the effectiveness of compensating components in restrictive welfare reforms. We provide novel evidence on feasible reform strategies by applying conjoint survey analysis to a highly realistic direct democratic setting of multidimensional welfare state reform. Drawing on an original survey of Swiss citizens’ attitudes toward comprehensive pension reform, we empirically demonstrate that built-in trade-offs strongly enhance the prospects of restrictive welfare reforms. Our findings indicate that agency matters: governments and policy makers can and must grant the right compensations to the relevant opposition groups to overcome institutional inertia

Foglalkoztatásbarát jóléti reformpolitikák a posztindusztriális gazdaságokban

A posztindusztrializmusba való átmenet egy sor új feszültséget teremtett a jóléti intézmények és a munkaerőpiaci teljesítmény között. Ezek a mai jóléti államokat új kihívásokkal szembesítik, melyek a foglalkoztatásbarát átalakulás – azaz a flexicurity, az aktiválás, valamint a munkahelyi és gondozási kötelezettségek összehangolása – irányába mutatnak. Így jelentős kérdéssé vált a jóléti államok kutatásában, hogy képesek-e alkalmazkodni a mai jóléti államok a posztindusztriális munkaerőpiacok feltételeihez és szükségleteihez, és ha igen, akkor hogyan és milyen mértékben. Tanulmányunkban azokat a főbb vitákat írjuk körül és elemezzük, melyek ezekben a politikai és foglalkoztatásbarát reformokkal foglalkozó irodalomban megjelentek. Először az érett jóléti államok általános reformképességét állítjuk az elemzés fókuszába, majd a rezsimspecifikus reformpolitikákat vesszük górcső alá, mivel a posztindusztrializmus igen eltérő kihívásokkal szembesíti a különböző jóléti rezsimeket. Minden egyes rezsim esetében számos olyan kutatási területet ajánlunk, melyek a jövőbeni elméletalkotás és kutatás szempontjából különösen jelentősnek és gyümölcsözőnek tűnnek