Erik Neimanns

• PhD in Political Science
• Senior Researcher at Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies

Governments in many of the advanced economies expanded childcare, an exemplary social investment policy, in recent years. Yet, considerable regional variation exists in expansion efforts, and often the supply of childcare still does not match demand. We explore the politics of this regional variation by studying Germany, a country that recently int...

Embedded in a broader discourse on future-oriented social policy and the idea of a social investment welfare state, governments in many of the advanced economies expanded childcare in recent years. Yet, in many countries considerable regional variation exists in coverage rates and expansion efforts, and often the supply of childcare still does not...

This article examines the relationship between national growth models and voters’ economic preferences. We theorise that centre-left voters are cross-pressured between a demand for higher wages and concerns about competitiveness, but the impact varies by growth model: the more a country is export-led, the more the competitiveness motive is internal...

While research on the economic characteristics of growth models across countries is now extensive, research on their politics is in its infancy, even though governments routinely pursue different strategies to generate growth. In particular, we lack evidence on (1) whether citizens have coherent preferences towards growth strategies, (2) what growt...

Embedded in a broader discourse on future-oriented social policy and the idea of a social investment welfare state, governments in many of the advanced economies expanded childcare in recent years. Yet, in many countries considerable regional variation exists in coverage rates and expansion efforts, and often the supply of childcare still does not...

A large literature on economic voting has documented that economic growth is a fundamental source of political stability for governments, increasing the size of the pie that governments can distribute and increasing governments´ chances to become reelected. Although there are strong, though non-trivial, links between economic growth and climate cha...

A sizable literature on media bias suggests that media coverage is frequently biased towards certain political and economic positions. However, we know little about what drives variation in political and ideological bias in news coverage across countries. In this paper, we argue that increasingly commercialized and concentrated media markets are li...

Existing research argues that a ‘democratic constraint’ blocks the path towards fiscal integration in the eurozone: Voters in creditor countries are fundamentally opposed to debt sharing, while voters in debtor countries are unwilling to leave the euro, which constrains the ability of their politicians to negotiate a more equitable distribution of...

An extensive literature in comparative political economy has examined the determinants of wage militancy and moderation at the country level. So far, however, there has been no attempt to analyse the determinants of wage satisfaction and dissatisfaction at the individual level. Based on two waves of the International Social Survey Programme, this a...

The traditional welfare state, which emerged as a response to industrialization, is not well equipped to address the challenges of today's postindustrial knowledge economies. Experts and policymakers have therefore called for welfare state readjustment towards a “social investment” model (focusing on human skills and capabilities). Under what condi...

A sizable literature has examined the relationship between welfare state regimes and attitudes towards redistribution, generally expecting that citizens in more generous welfare states are more supportive of redistribution. However, empirical findings are inherently mixed. I argue that the role of the media has been neglected in this research. By p...

After decades of value change toward more favorable views of maternal employment, the trend has slowed down and even reversed in some Western countries. This article argues that political parties play a crucial yet neglected role in shaping the trajectories of value change: the dynamics resulting from interparty competition place parties in a posit...

Research on the politics of social investment finds public opinion to be highly supportive of expansive reforms and expects this support to matter for the politics of expanding social investment. Expanding social investment, it is argued, should be particularly attractive to left-wing voters and parties because of the egalitarian potential of such...

Although the determinants of wage militancy and moderation have been studied extensively by comparative political economists, so far the literature has focused on the macro level of analysis. As a result, there has been no attempt to analyze the determinants of individual-level attitudes towards wages. Based on two waves of the International Social...

Existing research suggests that a “democratic constraint” blocks progress towards debt mutualization in the eurozone: voters in creditor countries fiercely oppose debt sharing, while voters in debtor countries strongly support remaining in the euro, which limits their governments’ bargaining power. However, this literature neglects that preferences...

The COVID-19 pandemic worsened Italy’s fiscal outlook by increasing public debt. If interest rates were to rise, it would become more likely that Italy experiences a financial crisis and requires a European bailout. How does making EU funds conditional on austerity and structural reforms affect Italians’ support for the euro? Based on a novel surve...

This article analyses the socio‐economic determinants of public preferences towards public spending and parental fees for childcare and how they are conditioned by institutional contexts. Previous studies of childcare policy preferences have focused on attitudes regarding the provision of care. However, when it comes to questions of financing, we k...

Childcare policies have become an important element of social investment reforms, but in most countries access to childcare has remained socially unequal. Some studies have suggested that a trend towards more gender egalitarian work–family attitudes has facilitated the expansion of childcare provision. Yet, we know little about the repercussions of...

Dieser Beitrag diskutiert das wechselseitige Verhältnis von öffentlicher Meinung und Sozialpolitik. Der Rolle der öffentlichen Meinung ist in jüngerer Zeit große Aufmerksamkeit zugekommen aufgrund ihres Einflusses auf sozialpolitisches Handeln politischer Parteien. Wir zeigen in diesem Beitrag unterschiedliche empirische und normative Perspektiven...

Social investment has recently received much attention among policy-makers and welfare state scholars, but the existing literature remains focused on policy-making on the macro level. We expand this perspective by studying public opinion towards social investment compared to other welfare policies, exploiting new public opinion data from eight Euro...

The concept of the social investment welfare state has received a lot of attention and support both from academics and policymakers. It is therefore commonly assumed that policies such as investing in education or family services would also receive significant support from the mass public. While there are some indications of this, existing comparat...

Public opinion research has found that increasing the investment in education is generally very popular among citizens in Western Europe. However, this evidence from publicly available opinion surveys may be misleading, because these surveys do not force respondents to prioritize between different parts of the education system or between education...

This article explores potential cleavages and conflicts between political support coalitions of social investment versus classical social transfer policies. To that extent, we analyse international survey data from the European Social Survey (ESS) for 21 European countries. Our central finding is that different welfare state beneficiary groups perc...