Reto Bürgisser

University of Zurich | UZH · Department of Political Science

Ever since the Great Recession, public debt has become politicized. Some research suggests that citizens are fiscally conservative, while other research shows that they punish governments for implementing fiscal consolidation. This begs the question of whether and how much citizens care about debt. We argue that debt is not a priority for citizens...

Even though social investment is highly popular, welfare state recalibration remains an uphill battle. When resources are scarce in times of austerity, welfare recalibration involves multidimensional trade-offs. Existing research primarily studied preferences toward individual policies or trade-offs in specific policy fields, failing to capture cit...

Despite being one of the world's major internationally traded services, tourism remains neglected within debates on European integration and growth models. We highlight the rise of tourism-led growth in Southern Europe. We argue that the process of European integration has been a double-edged sword, simultaneously incentivizing and forcing Southern...

The rise of new technologies has been a defining feature of advanced capitalist countries over the last decades, reigniting concerns about the future of work, rising inequality, and technological unemployment. While there is little doubt that rapid technological progress has far-reaching economic, social, and political consequences, little is known...

The transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy presents a major challenge, with green taxes often seen as an efficient policy to promote environmentally friendly behavior. However, these taxes are difficult to implement due to public concerns about immediate costs versus future environmental benefits. To address this, we conducted a survey ex...

The growth of the knowledge economy alters the risks and opportunities citizens experience in the labor market. Governments attempt to steer and support the adaptation of the workforce, enhance and spread opportunities, and mitigate the negative implications of these changes, in particular via skill-developing labor market policies. However, many r...

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 fo...

It is commonly assumed that voters favor lower taxes, which undermines the ability of governments to raise revenues. How does the demand for lower taxes change when it involves fiscal trade-offs? Who supports tax cuts at all costs? We use a survey experiment conducted in four European countries (Germany, Italy, Spain, and the UK) to answer these qu...

Bedrängt von strukturellem Wandel und neuen parteipolitischen Rivalen ringen sozialdemokratische Parteien in ganz Europa im 21. Jahrhundert um ein zukunftsfähiges Profil, das ihren historischen Anliegen des sozialen Ausgleichs und der Inklusion zu politischer Wirkung verhelfen kann. Auch in der Schweiz wird um die Ausrichtung der SP Schweiz gerunge...

Fast 50 Prozent der Wähler*innen, die bei den nationalen Wahlen 2015 der SP Schweiz ihre Stimme gegeben hatten, entschieden sich bei den nationalen Wahlen von 2019 anders. Wer der Urne 2019 nicht gleich gänzlich fernblieb, wanderte vornehmlich von der SP zu den Grünen ab, während die medial oft beschworenen Wanderungen von der SP zur SVP praktisch...

40 bis 45% aller Wähler*innen in der Schweiz können sich vorstellen, die SP zu wählen, aber nur etwa 40% von diesen potenziellen Wähler* innen tun es tatsächlich. Die SP verfügt demnach über ein beträchtliches unausgeschöpftes Wählerpotenzial. Überlappungen in den Wählerpotenzialen finden sich im links-grünen Parteienspektrum, aber kaum mit rechten...

Despite being one of the world's major internationally traded services, tourism remains neglected within debates on European integration and growth models. We highlight the rise of tourism-led growth in Southern Europe. We argue that the process of European integration has been a double-edged sword, simultaneously incentivizing and forcing Southern...

Welfare states around the globe are changing, challenged by the development of knowledge economies. In many countries, policymakers’ main response has been to modernize welfare states by focusing on future-oriented “social investment” policies that focus on creating, mobilizing, and preserving human skills and capabilities. Yet, there is massive va...

This chapter sheds light on the role of political parties as social investment protagonists, consenters, or antagonists in the reform of labor market and family policies in Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Drawing on original, hand-coded data of three decades of labor market and family policy reforms in Southern Europe, the findings show diverge...

Post-industrialization and occupational change considerably complicate partisan politics of the welfare state. This paper asks about the determinants of contemporary social democratic labor market policy. We argue that the composition of their support base is a critical constraint and empirically demonstrate that the actual size of different voter...

The COVID-19 crisis presents a unique opportunity to study how public opinion towards the redistributive role of the state reacts to a major economic shock. The pandemic and the measures taken to stop it exposed citizens to both increased fiscal constraint and heightened redistributive capacity: historical drops in GDP (and fiscal revenue) coincide...

Reducing economic inequality and combatting climate change are two strongly supported policy goals, but they will require significant public investments. In times of limited fiscal resources, governments struggle to raise additional revenues needed to finance both, making trade-offs between generally supported policy goals likely. But how do citize...

The COVID-19 crisis presents a unique opportunity to study how public opinion towards the redistributive role of the state reacts to a major economic shock. The pandemic and the measures taken to stop it exposed citizens to both increased fiscal constraint and heightened redistributive capacity: historical drops in GDP (and fiscal revenue) coincide...

Social investment is highly popular, but the welfare state recalibration remains an uphill battle. In austere times, resources are scarce and welfare recalibration involves multidimensional trade-offs. Existing research primarily studied preferences towards individual policies or trade-offs in specific policy fields, failing to capture citizens’ ov...

In the wake of the European sovereign debt crisis, governments across the continentadopted austerity. Existing research claims that fiscally conservative citizens supportsuch fiscal policies. However, this literature largely ignores that fiscal consolidationcarries substantial trade-offs. In hard times, governments have to cut spending or raisetaxe...

The COVID-19 crisis presents a unique opportunity to study how public opinion towards the redistributive role of the state reacts to a major economic shock. The pandemic and the measures taken to stop it exposed citizens to both increased fiscal constraint and heightened redistributive capacity: historical drops in GDP (and fiscal revenue) coincide...

This thesis argues that the politics of welfare state change do not follow the same dynamics as during the Golden Age. Post-industrialization, occupational change, and the emergence of new social risks have considerably complicated partisan politics of the welfare state. Social democratic parties do not anymore pursue a clear strategy of welfare st...