The Risk of Social Policy?: The electoral consequences of welfare state retrenchment and social policy performance in OECD countries

by Giger; Nathalie

• ISBN13: 9780415591980
• ISBN10: 0415591988
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2011-01-13
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Risk of Social Policy? uses a comparative perspective to systematically analyse the effects of social policy reforms and welfare state retrenchment on voting choice for the government. It re-examines twenty elections in OECD countries to show if and how social policy issues drive elections.This book contributes to the existing literature by providing an empirical analysis of the electoral implications of social policy. Giger asks the basic research question: What are the electoral consequences of social policy performance and retrenchment? More specifically, the following questions are addressed in order to provide a systematic test of the topic: Is retrenchment indeed completely unpopular? Do people punish the government for bad performance in the field of social policy? And what are the political implications of such a punishment reaction; does it affect the government composition? It shows empirically that the risks of welfare state retrenchment to incumbent governments may be lower than previously thought, and presents a theoretical framework for re-examining the impact of retrenchment initiatives on election outcome.Making an important contribution to studies in political economy and welfare by questioning the assumption that social policy is an inherently controversial policy field in times of elections, The Risk of Social Policy? will be of interest to scholars and students concerned with the interplay between government and citizens, social policy and voting behaviour, and the political economy of welfare.

Table of Contents

List of figures	p. x
List of tables	p. xi
Acknowledgements	p. xiii
Introduction	p. 1
Research question	p. 1
Structure of the book	p. 4
Welfare state research: the theoretical background for the research question	p. 7
Theories of welfare state development	p. 7
Empirical development of Western welfare states	p. 13
Public support for the welfare state	p. 14
My research question embedded in the welfare state literature	p. 18
Electoral research and issue voting: the theoretical background for the analyses	p. 21
Issue voting theory	p. 21
Categorizations of issue effects	p. 26
Issue salience, attitude accessibility and the link between attitudes and behaviour	p. 30
Empirical evidence for issue voting	p. 34
Some concluding remarks	p. 39
My research question in an electoral research framework	p. 40
The context: more theoretical background for the analyses	p. 46
Individuals nested in contexts	p. 46
The clarity of responsibility	p. 48
The welfare state environment	p. 51
The electoral campaign	p. 53
The context and implications for my research question	p. 57
Research strategy, design and method	p. 59
Elaboration of research steps and main hypotheses	p. 59
Research strategy	p. 65
Research design: data and time period	p. 68
Two theoretical models	p. 69
Practical issues: the theoretical models and the actual data	p. 80
Method	p. 85
The salience and performance of social policy in times of permanent austerity	p. 91
The salience of social policy	p. 91
The performance of social policy	p. 95
Summary	p. 98
The impact of social policy attitudes on the incumbent vote	p. 99
The impact of social policy salience	p. 100
The impact of social policy performance	p. 104
The impact of social policy salience and performance on defection from incumbent vote	p. 111
Summary of evidence of social policy attitudes	p. 116
The impact of the context on the relationship between social policy attitudes and the incumbent vote	p. 118
Summary of evidence for contextual influences	p. 130
Welfare state retrenchment and the incumbent performance in social policy	p. 131
Individual-level factors and contextual controls	p. 132
The influence of welfare state reforms	p. 135
Summary	p. 141
Re-election at stake? The impact of social policy on the election outcome	p. 142
The relative influence of the issue of social policy	p. 142
The relative influence of social policy performance	p. 145
Welfare state retrenchment and the campaign salience of social policy	p. 147
The influence of social policy on real-world government composition	p. 148
Summary	p. 151
Discussion of results and conclusion	p. 152
Joint discussion of results	p. 152
General implications for the literature	p. 158
Future research proposals	p. 159
Notes	p. 161
References	p. 169
Index	p. 191
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