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Framing Effects and Comparative Social Policy Reform: Comparing Blame Avoidance Evidence from Two Experiments
Abstract
Following Paul Pierson’s work on the New Politics of the welfare state, numerous
studies on welfare state reforms have shown that governments enacting welfare cuts regularly
employ blame avoidance strategies and use issue frames when they communicate welfare reform
policies. However, it remains largely unexplained to what extent these blame avoidance strategies
really impact on the attitudes of voters on the micro level. This study sets out to fill that void in the
literature. Using data on pension reforms and student grant cutbacks, the article provides experimental
evidence showing that blame avoidance and framing strategies affect individual attitudes
towards the proposed policies – in particular in the case of pension reforms. Moreover, in the case of
pensions, the impact is conditioned by individual risk exposure. These results add significantly to
the literature on blame avoidance and welfare state reform policies by indicating that successful
blame avoidance may be the reason why governments are not always punished for cutbacks to the
welfare state.
... However, despite the general support for the welfare state in general and pensions in particular, voters may also react differently to media reporting depending on whether they are actually affected by the changes discussed in the news. Framing studies seem at least to point to such effects (Wenzelburger & Hörisch, 2016) and the literature on issue publics (Converse 2006, p. 52, Soroka & Wlezien 2012) also argues that the expected effects of mass media reporting are only relevant for those persons that have an incentive to actually be concerned about pension changes. In order for an issue to affect vote intentions, it is not only relevant that it is accessible and available in the voter's mind, but also that it is of importance to her personally (Boninger et al. 1995;Krosnick 1990;Miller et al. 2016). ...
... 2. Indeed, the content of the reporting is clearly also an important part of the story and the way how reforms are framed should affect voters' reactions. For instance, studies on the framing of welfare state reforms have shown that by using specific frames, negative effects from cutbacks can not only be reduced (Goerres et al., 2020;Wenzelburger & Hörisch, 2016) but may even generate support for retrenchment (Slothuus, 2007). As we are mainly interested at the sheer reporting and have no data on the tone or content of the reporting, we cannot study these more specific effects here. ...
The question to what extent voters punish governments for cutting the welfare state is an unsettled issue in social policy research. Our contribution addresses this shortcoming by systematically analyzing how media reporting about legislative changes to the welfare state affects the public agenda and citizens’ vote intentions while controlling for the influence of actual cutbacks and expansions. In our analysis we examine the case of Germany from 1994 to 2014; a period where major cutbacks but also significant expansions to the German welfare state occurred. We find that mass media reporting about pension cutbacks is associated with a drop in government approval, whereas the reaction to expansive legislative changes is muted. We also find that the relationship of media reporting and government approval strongly depends on who is in government with the social democrats being punished harder than the Christian democrats.
... framing effects (e.g. Marx & Schumacher, 2016;Wenzelburger & Hörisch, 2016). There are two exceptions that, as in the present study, investigate procedure manipulation: Sulitzeanu-Kenan (2006), who finds that appointing a public inquiry does not necessarily decrease blame; and DeScioli and Bokemper (2014), who show that delegating a decision to a group vote can reduce blame. ...
... Lastly, our survey experiments were designed to produce novel insights on blame attribution, responding to previous calls (e.g. Wenzelburger & Hörisch, 2016) to conduct more research on the impact of different blame avoidance strategies. Yet this approach also means that our two studies are bound by the limits of experimental vignettes (see, for example, Gaines et al., 2007): respondents are cast as simple bystanders in the situation; the decision-consequence sequence is presented in a stylized manner, with causes and consequences separated by a single survey page, rather than (potentially) occurring months apart; and respondents are given only a single framing of the events. ...
Can public consultations—gatherings organised to solicit constituent opinions—reduce the blame attributed to elected representatives whose decisions end up backfiring? Using two pre-registered survey experiments conducted on nationally representative samples of US respondents, we examine whether the effectiveness of consultations as a blame avoidance tool may be shaped by: (1) consultation characteristics, especially regarding whether or not representatives align their policies, either actively or passively, with constituent opinion; and (2) elected representative and constituent characteristics, especially regarding a representative’s gender and constituents’ gender attitudes. Results suggest that public consultations are indeed liable to decrease blame attribution, just so long as constituent opinion is not explicitly opposed to the representative’s decision. Active alignment with constituent opinion, however, does not appear to be a requirement for decreased blame attribution—and effects related to gender and gender attitudes are also largely absent. These findings are important for scholars seeking to better understand blame attribution, clarifying how public consultations might help politicians to pre-empt blame by reducing clarity of responsibility.
... The literature on comparative politics tends to analyse the behaviour of elected politicians through the lenses of 'blame avoidance' and 'credit claiming' (Béland, 2005;Bonoli, 2012;Wenzelburger & Hörisch, 2016). Studies related to cuts in welfare spending have shown that blame avoidance as a strategy is particularly useful in countries with mature welfare states, but there also exist examples of credit claiming in such cases (Bonoli, 2012). ...
... Policies may be well designed, but if they are not accepted by their target audiences they may still fail to attain their goals (Shore & Tosun, 2019). Moreover, unpopular policies may reduce the politicians' prospect for re-election (Béland, 2005;Bonoli, 2012;Wenzelburger & Hörisch, 2016). ...
Coordination has attracted considerable attention in
the various sub-disciplines of political science. For
example, public choice research on collective action
problems acknowledges coordination as a situation
in which ‘cheating’ among actors is not rewarded.
Assuming that we have a game between two players A
and B, both players are rewarded if they jointly choose
either strategy ‘a’ or strategy ‘b’. If they fail to coordinate
their strategies, and one player goes for ‘a’ and
the other one for ‘b’, both receive a payoff of zero. This
need to align decisions with one another represents the
basic logic of the ‘coordination game’ (see Holzinger,
2001). In comparative political economy, coordination
also plays an important role (Hall & Gingerich, 2009;
Hall & Soskice, 2001). There the idea is that employers
coordinate among themselves to produce collective
goods, and in so doing, social institutions such as labour
unions support the employers (Regini, 2003). The
coordination or the lack of it in the economic domain
then has implications for adjacent policy domains such
as (higher) education (see Busemeyer & Trampusch,
2012).
Policy studies have elaborated on coordination as
a means to produce more effective and/or efficient
solutions to policy problems since these are typically
not limited to the actions taken in one policy domain,
but may require actions in two or more policy domains
(see Tosun & Lang, 2017). Public administration has
concentrated on institutions and procedures that are
conducive to coordination, such as centralised agencies
and leadership (e.g., May et al., 2011). Research
in public administration and public policy is broader
than the previous perspectives in the sense that the analytical
interest includes the proposing, adoption and
implementation of policies.
Coordination has been a research theme in studies
concentrating on specific types of policies such as climate
change, development cooperation and environmental
protection (see Tosun & Lang, 2017). In marked
contrast, and somewhat surprisingly, studies of social
welfare have paid little attention to coordination (but
see, e.g., Heidenreich & Rice, 2016). One of them is
the empirical investigation by Zimmermann, Aurich,
Graziano, and Fuertes (2014), in which the authors examine
to what extent the local-level public employment
services in Germany coordinate employment policies
with measures in other policy domains. This perspective
is insightful since, in many if not most cases, welfare
policy and service delivery require a coordination
of the measures in the different policy domains such
as education, economy, employment, family affairs,
housing and migration.
To reduce this knowledge gap, the theme of this
special issue is coordination. The key argument we
advance is that there exist various forms of coordination
and that each of these forms has the potential
to advance our understanding of how welfare-related
policies come about, how they are delivered and what
their effects are.
Why is it analytically rewarding to study coordination?
The myopic nature of policy-making makes it difficult
to pursue and attain coordination. As Jochim and
May (2010, p. 304) put it, ‘each of the relevant [policy]
subsystems provides a separate lens through which to
view problems’, which is complemented by separate
‘histories’ and the involvement of different interests.
Following this perspective, even if desirable, coordination
is not easy to attain and when it is attained it is
worth analysing how this is so.
In the next section, we introduce in detail our key
concepts and provide a rationale for the analytical
focus of this special issue. Subsequently, we explain
how the contributions relate to each other and which
insights we can gain from them regarding the overarching
theme. In the closing discussion section, we
offer some concluding remarks and develop a specific
research agenda for research on coordination in social
welfare.
... Bartels, 2005;Cruces et al., 2013;Petersen, 2015) and attitudes toward the welfare state (e.g. Wenzelburger and Hörisch, 2016;Giger and Nelson, 2013;Jaeger, 2012), we explore these questions using an experiment conducted via a nationally representative survey of just under 2000 ...
... Using survey experiments, Slothuus (2007) and Petersen et al. (2011), for instance, show that framing recipients as undeserving ("lazy") makes people less supportive of generous welfare state benefits. Similarly, Wenzelburger and Hörisch (2016) and Naumann (2017) find that people become more accepting of cuts if they are framed as economic necessities. And in a related strand of research, authors such as Lergetporer et al. (2016) and Stanley and Hartman (2017) have shown how information about how much is spent on the welfare stateand whether undeserving groups get a comparably large share of that spendingaffect public preferences. ...
Between pro-retrenchment politicians and segments of the media, exaggerated claims about the generous benefits enjoyed by those on welfare are relatively common. But to what extent, and under what conditions, can they actually shape attitudes towards welfare? This study explores these questions via a survey experiment conducted in the UK, examining: (1) the extent to which the value of the claimed figure matters; (2) if the presence of anchoring information about minimum wage income has an impact; and (3) whether these effects differ based on egalitarianism and political knowledge. Results suggest that increasing the size of the claimed figure decreases support in a broadly linear fashion, with anchoring information important only when (asserted) benefit levels are modestly above the minimum wage income. Egalitarianism, in turn, primarily matters when especially low figures are placed alongside information about minimum wage, while low-knowledge respondents were more susceptible to anchoring effects than high-knowledge ones.
... Work on BAB in the welfare state domain deals mainly with anticipatory forms of BAB, since politicians need to envisage voters' assessments of policies and design and frame the latter Hinterleitner and Sager 2016 -Of Foxes and Lions 7 accordingly. However, reactive strategies that actors apply when they need to justify unpopular policies have also been studied (Mortensen, 2012;Vis, 2015;Wenzelburger and Hörisch, 2015). ...
... Table 1 provides an overview of the literature on BAB along the two dimensions outlined above. Hinterleitner and Sager 2016 -Of Foxes and Lions 8 (Pierson, 1994(Pierson, , 1996 -BAB as a means of pursuing risky reforms (Vis, 2015) -Arms-length institutional bodies that displace blame (Fiorina, 1982;Horn, 1995) -Indexing provisions that limit budgetary discretion (Weaver, 1988) -Opposition of policies that impose large and direct costs (Arnold, 1990) -Blame-decreasing organizational responses to demands for transparency (Hood and Rothstein, 2001) -Responsibility-blurring governance vacuums in multi-level systems (Bache et al., 2015) Reactive BAB -Justification for retrenchment and its effects (Mortensen, 2012;Wenzelburger and Hörisch, 2015) -Blame-deflecting effects of political accounts (McGraw, 1991) -Cabinet officials as 'lightning rods' (Ellis, 1994) -Blame management after crisis situations (Bovens et al., 1999;Brändström and Kuipers, 2003;Brändström et al., 2008;Hood et al., 2009;Boin et al., 2010;Moynihan, 2012;Brändström, 2015) -Commissions of inquiry for blame avoidance reasons (Sulitzeanu-Kenan, 2010) ...
Blame avoidance behavior (BAB) encompasses all kinds of integrity-protecting activities by officeholders in the face of potentially blame-attracting events. Although considered essential for a realistic understanding of politics and policymaking, a general understanding of this multi-faceted behavioral phenomenon and its implications has been lacking to date. We argue that this is due to the lack of careful conceptualization of various forms of BAB. Crucially, the difference between anticipatory and reactive forms of BAB is largely neglected in the literature. This paper links anticipatory and reactive forms of BAB as two consecutive decision situations. It exposes dependence relationships between the situations that trigger BAB, the rationalities at work, the resources and strategies applied by blame-avoiding actors, and the various consequences thereof. The paper concludes that anticipatory and reactive BAB are distinct phenomena that require specific research approaches to assess their relevance for the workings of polities.
... Another possible way in which myths influence is by blame-avoidance strategies, because by blaming someone it might be possible to avoid electoral punishment for the reduction in benefits as framing can affect attitudes towards changes (Wenzelburger and Hörisch 2016). Thus, policy makers might use myths as a way to get changes through and perhaps even to hide who are the winners and losers of the changes if they have found a scapegoat. ...
... Given that blame-related defensive practices by government insiders can have broader social implications, many studies address blame avoidance in government (Hering 2008;Hinterleitner 2017;Hobolt and Tilley 2014;Hood 2002Hood , 2010Hood , 2014Hood, Jennings, and Copeland 2016;Howlett 2012;Leong and Howlett 2017;Vis 2016;Wenzelburger and Hörisch 2016;Weaver 1986). They have also identified many strategies for blame avoidance. ...
The burgeoning digital economy has also aroused wide public concerns over its improper use of personal data for economic and political profits. This study focuses on the milestone Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal and examines how Mark Zuckerberg succeeded in avoiding public blame during two US Congressional hearings. An integrated analytic framework has been established by combining blame theory and critical discourse analysis to examine blame-avoiding strategies used by Mark Zuckerberg during the two Congressional hearings. The findings have revealed not only the topics but also the specific strategies and the linguistic means and real-izations for these strategies. It is expected that this study can generate significant implications on blame-avoiding strategies by digital corporations for their inherently flawed business models.
... Another important finding demonstrates the importance of communicating the reforms to the public and stakeholders through studies by independent institutions (Williamson 1994, Tompson 2009, and/or effective communication strategies that focus on the imminent catastrophe that would be caused by inaction (Weyland 1996, Wenzelburger andHörisch 2016). ...
In 2000, the minority Socialist government led by António Guterres decriminalised the
possession and consumption of drugs. This law made Portugal unique in having a formal
system that directs the drug user to a panel under the purview of the Ministry of Health,
as opposed to the Justice Ministry, and hence constitutes a successful ‘Original
Innovation’. In this article, we present a theoretical framework that claims that original
innovation, though rare, only occurs when a series of variables are present at the same
time. We then demonstrate that these variables were indeed all present in the Portuguese
case. This research offers lessons to policy-makers and policy activists about the
importance of electoral mandates, communication, inclusion, transparency, deliberation
and evaluation when creating new policies - during and after policy-design. It also
reminds us that the Portuguese model goes beyond decriminalisation. In fact, the rapid
and positive effects of well-funded harm-reduction, drug treatment and prevention
programs were fundamental for the success and resilience of the Portuguese drug policy.
... But it is also useful to any research or practice involving multiple interpretations of how decisions are made, how they become effective (or not) and how they affect a policy area. This can apply to explaining the importance of the social construction of target groups in childcare policy (Collins 2018), as well as issue framing in blame avoidance by governments implementing unpopular reforms, such as 55 social policy retrenchment and welfare cutbacks (Wenzelburger and Hörisch 2016). ...
The problem raised by causality in comparative policy analysis is twofold. First, how can we be sure there is actually a causal relationship between two variables, factors or events? Second, what do we really know about the causal forces, the individual motivations and the institutions at work between the alleged explanandum and the explanans (and vice versa)? The answer to these questions depends on whether we intend to predict what can or will happen if the same cause is present at different points in time or space, or whether we are willing to explain a causal process linking a trigger (i.e. a cause, a factor or a determinant) to an outcome, a result or an effect. To contribute to the discussion, we build on a typology of models of causation, coined as “regularity” (if causality is about generalizations based on constant variations), “necessity” (if it is about causal powers at work in contingent situations), “ideal-type” (if it is about historical patterns or chains of events), and “social construction” (if it is about actor's frames and values). Each model fulfills a different purpose when addressing causality. We explain how these models work and command the selection and utilization of our methods. We discuss the contribution to the discussion, made by the four articles included in this special issue, which are organized by model of causation.
... For example, Wenzelburger and Hörisch (2016) demonstrate that relatively generic blame avoidance and framing strategies affect students' attitudes towards (hypothetical) pension and student grant cutbacks. Häusermann et al. (2019) find evidence that voters are more likely to support pension cutbacks if reform packages include compensatory spending. ...
Draft contribution to forthcoming Handbook on Austerity, Retrenchment and the Welfare State
... Pierson's ideas about how political actors can use strategies to overcome the forces of resilience has inspired an important body of research on blame avoidance strategies (Vis, 2016), which mostly consists of case studies showing how political actors use different strategies while retrenching the welfare state. 4 Many different lists and categorizations of political strategies have been put forward building on this case study evidence (for a summary: König and Wenzelburger, 2014), but most of them are related either to organizational strategies, such as obfuscation, division and compensation (and many more, see Weaver (1986) or Vis and Van Kersbergen (2007)), or to communication strategies, which means to influence the perceptions of voters about the necessity or justification of unpopular cutbacks (McGraw, 1991;Marx and Schumacher, 2016;Slothuus, 2007;Wenzelburger and Hörisch, 2016). ...
Dismantling the Welfare State? is a modern classic in the welfare state literature. Yet although the book is widely known, the ‘Piersonian argument’ as it is typically referred to today bears limited resemblance to the book’s highly nuanced and thought-provoking ideas. This review revisits the book and explores some of the lessons it still holds for the research community.
... In order to achieve fiscal balance and to finance current and future public expenses, governments may need to introduce austerity measures at some point during their time in office. We also assume that political parties see austerity policies as a political risk (see, for example, Vis 2009;Wenzelburger and Hörisch 2016), and that politicians will engage in various blame avoidance strategies to avert drawing the ire of voters for such policies (see, for example, McGraw 1990; Weaver 1986). ...
This article investigates whether governing parties strategically time austerity policies to help them win re-election. It contributes to existing research by focusing directly on government policy output, analyzing over 1,200 welfare and taxation austerity measures in thirteen Western European countries over twenty years. In line with previous research, the authors find that governments become less likely to introduce austerity measures as elections approach. The study introduces original hypotheses about which governments have the ability and opportunity to strategically time policy decisions. The authors suggest that minimal winning cabinets with leadership change (new prime ministers) face less complex bargaining environments and can credibly shift responsibility for austerity measures to the preceding government. The empirical analyses show that these governments are most likely to strategically time austerity policies.
... As soon as they are in power, their new capabilities to control the situation will be emphasised. These narrative stories can be related to the idea of blame avoidance in welfare state reform: if unpopular reforms are passed, politicians make use of blame avoidance strategies to communicate their reforms (Pierson, 1996;Wenzelburger & Hörisch, 2016). A new government can argue that the preceding government has provoked an economic crisis, which can only be addressed by passing far-reaching reforms. ...
When policy paradigms compete for sovereignty, a well thought-out narrative story is essential to arguing why one paradigm is superior to another. Narrative stories can be applied to underline the imperative for paradigmatic policy change. Combining Hall’s work on policy paradigms with Stone’s conceptualisation of narrative stories, this article explores how narrative stories are applied to support or oppose competing policy paradigms and proposes that the systematic analysis of narrative stories fosters a better understanding of policy paradigms. The case of labour market policy in Brazil is used to exemplify the argument: 13 years of Workers’ Party rule induced far-reaching changes in Brazilian social and labour market policy based on demand-orientation. Following the impeachment of President Rousseff, interim-President Temer initiated major labour reforms, reviving liberal narratives. This article explores how these policy changes are representative of the competition between policy paradigms, which are reflected in party-political competition, and how recent paradigm change is supported by the construction of narrative stories.
... For the literature on welfare state retrenchment, there is no avoiding the need to zoom in on governing elites to establish when, whether, and how they (successfully) engage in blame avoidance. Recent research identifies experimental research methods as a promising way to study the effect of blame avoidance strategies on voters' perception of welfare state retrenchment (Wenzelburger 2014;Wenzelburger and Hörisch 2016). Meanwhile, there is also a need to develop an understanding of the applicability and application of blame avoidance strategies in real-life policy-making situations. ...
This chapter makes conceptual progress on an important puzzle in the research on welfare state retrenchment: Are welfare states retrenched because governing elites are astute blame avoiders or because important parts of the electorate have come to believe in the austerity medicine prescribed by mainstream economists? Existing research is, by and large, ill placed to address this question because it treats blame avoidance as a latent variable that is neither measured nor empirically observed. To cast some light on this important puzzle, this chapter develops a comprehensive categorization of blame avoidance strategies that governing elites can employ to avoid electoral punishment for retrenchment. The categorization identifies the mechanics of particular strategies and yields insights into their applicability, empirical traces, and effects on voters. In so doing, it can guide future research on the causal determinants of successful welfare state retrenchment. Progress on this puzzle promises important insights into how the governing elites of modern capitalist democracies juggle to reconcile domestic demands and supranational constraints.
... Diese Schluss-folgerung legen auch empirische Untersuchungen nahe, die nicht direkt die Effizienz- these betreffen. So hat in den letzten Jahren die Literatur zu Schuldvermeidungsstra- tegien eindrücklich gezeigt, dass Politiker offensichtlich fürchten, bei den nächsten Wahlen abgestraft zu werden und daher ein breites Portfolio von Strategien anwen- den, damit ihnen nicht die Verantwortung für Sozialkürzungen zugeschrieben wer- den kann (Wenzelburger und Hörisch 2016). Dann wäre es möglich, die Theorie in der Form weiterzuentwickeln, dass wohlfahrtstaatliche Arrangements auch als ein Standortvorteil gesehen werden und sogar Investitionen begünstigen können ( Morel et al. 2012). ...
Dieser Beitrag präsentiert den Forschungsstand zum Einfluss der Globalisierung auf Sozialpolitik. Ein zentraler Befund ist, dass die Globalisierung bisher keine eindeutigen Auswirkungen auf die Sozialpolitik hatte. Dies legt die Vermutung nahe, dass der Zusammenhang zwischen diesen Variablen komplexer sein könnte, als es die Ansätze zur Erklärung von Staatstätigkeit erwarten lassen. Um die Auswirkungen auf Sozialpolitik besser erfassen zu können, erscheint eine Erweiterung der Perspektive um die Diffusionsforschung und auf die Staaten jenseits der OECD erfolgversprechend.
... Carsten Jensen und Co-Autoren (2017) haben zudem belegt, dass bei Kürzungen verstärkt auf wenig sichtbare Politikinstrumente gesetzt wird,während Parteien beim Wohlfahrtsstaatsausbau darauf achten, dass die Reform für die Wähler gut erkennbar ist. Auch dies spricht für die "New-Politics"-These. Schließlich konnte durch Experimente nachgewiesen werden, dass verschiedene Blame-Avoidance-Strategien tatsächlich wirken(Wenzelburger 2014;Wenzelburger und Hörisch 2016). ...
Politische Parteien gelten als zentral für die Ausgestaltung des Wohlfahrtsstaates. Dieser Aufsatz diskutiert die theoretische Herleitung von Parteiendifferenzen über die Interessen der Wähler einerseits, über die Überzeugungen der Parteien selbst andererseits und diskutiert, in welcher Weise der Wettbewerb um Wählerstimmen und Regierungsbeteiligung Parteiendifferenzen entgegenwirkt und inwieweit Parteieneffekte durch Globalisierung und Institutionen konditioniert werden. Anschließend wird ein Überblick über den Forschungsstand zu Parteieneffekten auf die Sozialpolitik in den entwickelten Demokratien gegeben. Dabei zeigt sich, dass Parteieneffekte im Zeitverlauf etwas abgenommen haben, allerdings bei der Analyse der wohlfahrtsstaatlichen Generosität und bei arbeitsmarktnahen Sozialleistungen besonders deutlich erkennbar sind.
... 18 Bonoli 2012, e.g. Hood 2007Lindbom 2007;Vis 2016;Wenzelburger and Hörisch 2016. 19 Stiller 2010, Elmelund-Praestekaer and Emmenegger 2013 avoidance (where problems are kept off the agenda, unless somebody else can be blamed, or where an economic crisis or otherwise massive pressure can be used as a blame avoidance device). ...
Welfare states are exposed to a host of cost-inducing ‘reform pressures’. An experiment implemented in Germany, Norway and Sweden tests how various reform pressure frames affect perceptions about the future financial sustainability of the welfare state. Such perceptions have been shown to moderate electoral punishment for welfare reform, but little is known about their origins. Hypotheses are formulated in dialogue with newer research on welfare state change, as well as with older theory expecting more stability in policy and attitudes (the ‘new politics’ framework). Research drawing on ‘deservingness theory’ is also consulted. The results suggest large variations in impact across treatments. The most influential path to effective pressure framing is to ‘zoom in’ on specific economic pressures linked to undeserving groups (above all immigration, but also to some extent low employment). Conversely, a message emphasizing pressure linked to a very deserving group (population aging) had little effect. A second conceivable path to pressure framing entails ‘zooming out’ – making messages span a diverse and more broadly threatening set of challenges. This possibility, however, received weaker support.
... Second, some interesting recent work on blame avoidance devises methods for assessing the effectiveness of presentational blame management strategies. In case of an electorally risky policy reform, one could compare government's approval ratings before and after the reform (Vis 2016), or carry out split ballot experiments to test whether people who read the texts about a reform including blame avoidance strategies think more positively about the new policy (Wenzelburger and Hörisch 2016). In case of a political scandal, one could explore the effect of officeholders' blame management on one day on the level of blame appearing in the news media on subsequent days (Hood et al. 2009(Hood et al. , 2016. ...
Policymakers often engage in blame avoidance behaviour that affects the ways in which they structure their organisations, adopt policies and operating routines, and present their work to the public. The linguistic aspects of such behaviour have received relatively little academic attention. In this paper, I seek to advance blame avoidance scholarship by introducing to its analytical toolbox useful conceptual instruments from linguistically informed discourse studies. Based on a multidisciplinary literature review, I show how the discursive study of policy-related blame games is situated within the wider scholarship dealing with a variety of blame phenomena. I provide an inventory of the micro-level building blocks of blame games: discursive strategies of persuasion, and narratives of cause, failure, and scandal. I suggest that by treating government blame games as mediated ‘language games’, policy scholars can complement the analysis of various political variables traditionally discussed in policy literature with detailed understanding of the micro-politics of presentational blame avoidance.
... 3 Politische Ökonomie und Sozialpolitikforschung, die ja annehmen, dasswenn schon nicht die Unterschicht allein, so doch -die Präferenzen der gesellschaftlichen Mitte einen Einfluss auf redistributive Politik haben, wird herausgefordert durch die These der selektiven Repräsentation (Page/Shapiro 1983). Eine möglicherweise weniger enge Beziehung zwischen Präferenzen und Politik wird außerdem durch Studien gestützt, die zeigen, dass Kürzungspolitik durchaus möglich war, da framing die Problemwahrnehmung ablenkt (Slothuus 2007;Wenzelburger/Hörisch 2015). 4 ...
Political economy of redistribution and comparative social policy research view the median voter as the political force, which demands marketregulating social policy in periods of increased income disparities and to which governments – to be re-elected – must respond. However, government responsiveness has been questioned, especially the responsiveness for political demands of low-income households. Are even the preferences of the median voter only selectively addressed through politics? If the median voter is actually influential, its redistributive preferences should explain the outcome of government action, e.g. size of redistribution. Is this true? Based on a pooled dataset with observations between 1980 and 2012 for 13 OECD-countries it is shown that the political position of the median voter alone has no impact. Rather mediating political factors like a proportional electoral system and left parties with wider welfare programs provide for broader representation and more redistribution.
... There is a growing body of political science literature on blame avoidance in government (Hering, 2008;Hinterleitner, 2017;Hobolt & Tilley, 2014;Hood, 2002Hood, , 2011Hood, , 2014Hood, Jennings, & Copeland, 2016;Howlett, 2012;Leong & Howlett, 2017;Vis, 2016;Wenzelburger & Hörisch, 2016) and several discourse analysts have focused their studies on blaming or blame-deflecting language use in politics (e.g. Hansson, 2015aHansson, , 2015bHansson, , 2017aHansson, , 2017bHansson, , 2017cHart, 2016;Wodak, 2006Wodak, , 2015. ...
Modern executive politics is characterised by blame games – offensive and defensive symbolic performances by various individual or collective social actors. In this article, I propose a discursive approach to analysing opposition–government blame games where top politicians try to persuade mass audiences to side with them in disputes over government's culpability by using carefully crafted written texts. Drawing insights and concepts from the tradition of discourse-historical studies into political communication as well as the recent literature on blame avoidance in government, I analyse conflicting opinion pieces published by the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition in the UK in the wake of the global financial crisis that developed since 2007. I present a basic functional argument model of attributing and avoiding blame, reconstruct the competing argumentation schemes that help us interpret public debates over the crisis, and show how blame is attached or deflected using various persuasive discursive devices, such as metaphors, lexical cohesion, and ways of framing and positioning, that underlie particular attacks, justifications, or excuses. In conclusion, I emphasise the importance of looking beyond the formal structure of the arguments to identify the more subtle emotional appeals used in government-related blame games.
... In the first case, the results possess high internal validity, but lower external validity. Results from experiments conducted with students or other selective groups and a small N sample (Slothuus 2007;Wenzelburger/Hörisch 2015;Vössing 2015) risk to be questioned, if the group involved and the experimental topic do not fit. Since the treatment groups are randomly assigned, they can still claim internal representativeness, but external validity is a problem. ...
This chapter aggregates the results of the disciplinary and mostly experimental sub-projects of the research group “Need-Based Justice and Distribution Procedures” into an empirically informed normative theory of need-based justice. Its elements include a concept of need, the identification of need, the recognition of need, and the consequences of need-based redistribution. The chapter also critically discusses the results in relation to the normative criteria of consistency, legitimacy, and sustainability. As a central result, we present a distributive principle for prosperous societies based on reciprocal solidarity—the Lexineed principle—which, within the framework of a strong pluralistic theory of distributive justice, gives priority to the satisfaction of recognized needs over all other principles of justice.
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, public health officials became increasingly visible in the media, sometimes appearing alone or alongside elected officials to announce policy changes and updates on the virus. To what extent does varying the official chosen to announce a new policy affect public support for the governing party and the policy? To answer this question, we analyze data from a survey experiment fielded in March 2022 announcing the implementation of additional COVID-19 vaccine requirements. We draw from three experimental treatments that manipulate who delivers the message and a control group. We find no discernable difference in either political or policy support when this message is delivered by a scientific expert, a political leader or both. The sole exception is the personal impact delivering this message has on the Premier’s rating, although this loss is only evident among those already opposed to COVID-19 regulations.
Blame avoidance is difficult to achieve in a Westminster-style system, as the minister is supposed to be accountable for all the actions of their ministry to the legislature. One route to achieve it is institutional reforms providing public servants with decision-making autonomy not generally available under this model. This is more likely to work in a policy area where discontent with unpopular decisions is diffused across the entire population, rather than geographically concentrated. One such area is provincial drug formularies. In Canada, drugs go through a multi-stage process before they are paid for by provincial governments. A province which has instituted reforms to leave the final decision in the hands of bureaucrats, thereby creating a blame avoidance screen for the government, ought to be able to say no more often than a province where the health minister has the final say. Using the list of recommendations issued by the CDTHA's Pan-Canadian Oncology Drug Review (PCODR) from 2011 to 2023, the hypothesis tested is that Ontario, where legislation grants the power to make final coverage decisions to a public servant, will have adopted fewer of the drugs with negative PCODR recommendations than will have Alberta, where the final decision rests with the minister. The results indicate this hypothesis should be rejected.
The Brexit referendum campaign was characterised by blaming of the EU, with blame seemingly inextricable from politics. However, what is not clear from existing research is what blame actually does to the people who read, hear, or otherwise consume it (the ‘audience’). Does blame actually matter? Specifically, in what ways does exogenous blame make villains in politics, as characters who are bad, strong, and active, and whom we feel negatively towards? Such a question is vital in the context of affective polarisation, where it is not simply that we disagree with our opponents—it is it that we experience negative emotions towards them.
This research applies an abductive approach grounded in a critical realist ontology that cycles between theory and empirical data. Feldman Barrett’s Theory of Constructed Emotions is introduced to connect societal ‘feeling structures’ discussed in prior international relations work with the human body that has hitherto been absent, while blame is defined as a discursive practice in which a speaker claims a party is doing, or has done, a harmful thing. A data analysis framework is developed that permits for investigation of the effects of discursive practices, calling for identification of context, performance, effects, and points of resistance and contestation. The empirical chapters address each stage of this framework in sequence.
The Brexit referendum campaign is selected as a case study, and a mixed methods design utilising both qualitative content and statistical analyses emerges in-depth meaning and wider generalisability alike. Data analysed includes pre-referendum materials from Nigel Farage and the Leave campaigns, particularly Leave.EU, as well as the Remain campaign (355); this is compared with three months of articles and public commentary from the ‘Metro’ newspaper (60 issues), providing insight into context, performance, and contestation. In-depth semi-structured focus groups and interviews with Leave voters (18) and a survey-experiment conducted amongst UK voters (1368) enables identification of both contestation and the effects of blame—specifically how blame makes people feel, and how it makes them feel about a party who is blamed.
This research finds that blame makes villains in politics directly where it engenders negative, ‘villain-type feelings’ towards a blamed party, with annoyance predominant; and indirectly where it engenders compassion for victims. Its effects are mediated by the audience who consume the blame and may be mitigated by contestation strategies employed by that audience or others such as alternative campaigns. These include strategies that engage directly with the blame—counter-blaming, rebuttal, naming and shaming blame—as well as indirectly through use of alternate discursive practices such as credit or threat, and by changing the subjects and objects of blame.
This work exceptionally investigates the effects and contestation of ‘exogenous’ third-party blame, contributing to the fields of international relations, political science, and social psychology; shows that it is not what we ‘are’ but rather what we ‘know’ that circumscribes the effects of blame, defraying concerns over psychometric targeting; provides insight into how communication professionals and EU staff may contest blame, beyond avoiding or shifting it; and demonstrates the effectiveness of blame in creating a villain of the EU in the specific case of the Brexit campaign.
The literature on blame avoidance suggests that politicians seek to avoid the risk of electoral punishment by means of blame‐shifting. Based on a quantitative content analysis of public responsibility attributions, this article explores public blame‐shifting among Greek and Spanish parties in austerity governments during the eurozone crisis. Arguing that blame avoidance behavior in times of austerity is conditioned by party ideology, the findings suggest that incumbent left‐wing parties are more inclined to shift the blame whereas conservative parties also claim credit. The article then explores how the European character of the crisis influenced the patterns of blame‐shifting. The results show firstly, that external blame‐shifting rose significantly in times of incumbency, when foreign actors appeared to be ideal scapegoats; secondly, external blame‐shifting in the crisis was slightly more common among left‐wing parties. The article contributes to assessing the role of party ideology for blame‐shifting and it helps to understand blame‐shifting in European policy fields.
Policy research and particularly social policy analysis have increasingly drawn upon the concept of framing. A number of contributions have demonstrated its usefulness for building explanations of policy change and its consequences. However, the adoption of the concept has also been accompanied by a considerable conceptual ambiguity. It is not only understood in quite different ways, at times its use is also rather vague and far removed from a narrow definition of framing. This paper discusses different ways in which framing is adopted within the field of policy research and the conceptual and epistemological stumbling blocks that follow from them. It argues that the most problematic use occurs where framing is used to characterize policy action and even more so in combination with public opinion changes that framing allegedly brought about. Finally, some ways forward for achieving a more rigorous use of the framing concept in policy research are presented.
While the idea that policy-makers are motivated by the desire to earn “credit” for their work has a long history, policy studies since Weaver (J Public Policy 6(4):371–398, 1986) have also used the concept of “blame” to help understand these often observed but little studied aspect of policy decision-making activity. Observed credit- and blame-related activities range from the agenda-denial behaviour of politicians to the use of policy evaluations to paint overly positive pictures of the effectiveness of policy efforts. Despite their frequent invocation by analysts, however, the status of “blame” and “credit” and their component parts is not well understood and different uses and conceptions of the term abound in the policy literature. This article addresses three issues surrounding the concepts which require clarification: first, the relationship between “blame” and “credit” as motivators of policy agents and activities; second, the related but not synonymous behavioural notions of “blame avoidance” and “credit claiming” and their relationship to more primordial ideas of “blame” and “credit”; and third, the notions of “reactive” versus “anticipatory” blame avoidance and credit claiming. The article develops a framework to help move the discussion of these three issues and of the basic concept forward. It argues that blame especially should be studied more widely from the view of the public as well as that of the public official, and that both concepts should be analysed as part of the larger issue of the legitimation of public actions, rather than, as is often the case, solely as an aspect of the utilitarian calculations and risk management activities of politicians and officials.
50th Anniversary Virtual Issue
Social Policy & Administration Top Cited Papers with Commentary and Author Review
Welfare reforms have been treated intensely in the area of policy research. The communication of these reforms have only more recently received increased attention. Research on this subject is overall still rather heterogeneous, comprising a variety of approaches and emphases. This contribution aims at systematizing this literature focusing on how reform communication differs depending on the circumstances. The overview is structured by prevailing approaches, relevant contextual factors, and empirical evidence. It is maintained that treating the communication of reforms as a dependent variable—as has been done by some more recent studies—opens up a more systematic approach. Finally, the literature survey points to conceptual and methodological problems and challenges in the systematic comparative analysis of welfare reform communication.
This article takes stock of and reviews the comparative literature on blame avoidance strategies in social policy reform to identify the conditions under which blame avoidance strategies are necessary (or not). This helps to solve the seemingly contradictory findings that blame avoidance strategies may not (always) be necessary while they are often employed. Moreover, it proposes that experimental designs help to establish the effect of blame avoidance strategies and presents an approach for assessing systematically the employment and success of blame avoidance strategies. Hereby, the article outlines a research agenda for comparative theory development.
Recent findings about the electoral cost of welfare state retrenchment challenge the view of the 'New Politics' literature that cutting welfare state entitlements is electorally risky. In fact, there seems to be no systematic punishment for governments retrenching the welfare state. At the same time, however, studies show that governments use numerous blame avoidance strategies when cutting welfare. Reflecting on this apparent contradiction we put forward two points. First, qualitative evidence from interviews with political leaders suggests that it is not the actual risk of being punished that entices politicians to use blame avoidance but the perception of this risk. This explains why blame avoidance strategies are widely used. Second, the existing studies showing that governments are not systematically punished for cutting the welfare state suffer from the lack of control for blame avoidance effects. We show that an experimental design could be a remedy for this problem.
Multiplicative interaction models are common in the quantitative political science literature. This is so for good reason.
Institutional arguments frequently imply that the relationship between political inputs and outcomes varies depending on the
institutional context. Models of strategic interaction typically produce conditional hypotheses as well. Although conditional
hypotheses are ubiquitous in political science and multiplicative interaction models have been found to capture their intuition
quite well, a survey of the top three political science journals from 1998 to 2002 suggests that the execution of these models
is often flawed and inferential errors are common. We believe that considerable progress in our understanding of the political
world can occur if scholars follow the simple checklist of dos and don'ts for using multiplicative interaction models presented
in this article. Only 10% of the articles in our survey followed the checklist.
Will voters punish the government for cutting back welfare state entitlements? The comparative literature on the welfare state suggests that the answer is yes. Unless governments are effectively employing strategies of blame avoidance, retrenchment leads to vote loss. Because a large majority of voters supports the welfare state, the usual assumption is that retrenchment backfires equally on all political parties. This study contributes to an emerging body of research that demonstrates that this assumption is incorrect. On the basis of a regression analysis of the electoral fate of the governing parties of 14 OECD countries between 1970 and 2002, we show that most parties with a positive welfare image lose after they implemented cutbacks, whereas most parties with a negative welfare image do not. In addition, we show that positive welfare image parties in opposition gain votes, at the expense of those positive welfare image parties in government that implemented welfare state retrenchment.
According to important parts of the literature, blame avoidance opportunities, i.e. the necessity and applicability of blame avoidance strategies, may differ between countries according to the respective institutional set-ups and between governing parties according to their programmatic orientation. In countries with many veto actors, a strategy of ‘Institutional Cooperation’ between these actors is expected to diffuse blame sufficiently to render other blame avoidance strategies obsolete. In contrast, governments in Westminster-style democracies should resort to the more unilateral strategies of presentation, policy design and timing. At the same time, left-wing parties are expected to have an easier time implementing spending cuts while right-wing parties are less vulnerable when proposing tax increases. Evidence from the politics of budget consolidation in Britain and Germany does not corroborate these hypotheses. Instead, it seems that party competition conditions the effects institutions and the partisan complexion of governments have on the politics of blame avoidance.
A growing amount of research is devoted to the question of which individual and contextual variables enhance, limit, or obliterate news framing effects. However, the fundamental question whether framing effects vary depending on the issue at stake has not been addressed. Based on two experimental studies (total N = 1,821), this article investigates the extent to which framing effects differ in magnitude as well as process, depending on how important an issue is. The studies show that a high-importance issue yields no effects and a low-importance issue large effects. This moderating function of issue importance operates both at the contextual and at the individual levels. The implications for future framing effects research are discussed.
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Issue framing is one of the most important means of elite influence on public opinion. However, we know almost nothing about how citizens respond to frames in what is possibly the most common situation in politics: when frames are sponsored by political parties. Linking theory on motivated reasoning with framing research, we argue not only that citizens should be more likely to follow a frame if it is promoted by “their” party; we expect such biases to be more pronounced on issues at the center of party conflicts and among the more politically aware. Two experiments embedded in a nationally representative survey support these arguments. Our findings revise current knowledge on framing, parties, and public opinion.
Framing is the process by which a communication source constructs and defines a social or political issue for its audience. While many observers of political communication and the mass media have discussed framing, few have explicitly described how framing affects public opinion. In this paper we offer a theory of framing effects, with a specific focus on the psychological mechanisms by which framing influences political attitudes. We discuss important conceptual differences between framing and traditional theories of persuasion that focus on belief change. We outline a set of hypotheses about the interaction between framing and audience sophistication, and test these in an experiment. The results support our argument that framing is not merely persuasion, as it is traditionally conceived. We close by reflecting on the various routes by which political communications can influence attitudes.
Belgium and the Netherlands were perfect examples of the âwelfare without workâ policy that characterized European welfare states â until a political crisis in both countries during the early 1990s produced a surprising divergence in administration. While Belgiumâs government announced major reforms, its social security policy remained relatively resilient. In the Netherlands, however, policymakers implemented unprecedented cutbacks as well as a major overhaul of the disability benefits program. The Crisis Imperative explains this difference as the result of crisis rhetoricâthat is, the deliberate construction of a crisis as the imperative for change. It will be a valuable resource for policymakers, researchers, and anyone interested in welfare reform in the United States and abroad.
In this paper attitudes to redistribution in eight Western nations are analysed, using data from the International Social Survey Program (ISSP).The paper begins with a discussion of various ‘regime types’as presented by Esping- Andersen and Castles and Mitchell, among others. Gauntries are then chosen to represent four ‘twin pairs’of countries, approximating four ‘worlds of welfare capitalism’: the social democratic (Sweden/Norway), the conservative (Germany/Austria), the liberal (US/Canada), and the radical (Australia/New Zealand). The empirical analysis assesses whether attitudes to redistribution and income differences are structured in the way suggested by the discussion of different cleavage structures in various regime types. It is concluded that while the level of attitudes regarding redistribution and income differences clearly is affected by regime type, group patterns are very similar between all the countries.
During the period of exceedingly critical news coverage surrounding the Monica Lewinsky debacle, President Bill Clinton's job approval ratings were at some of the highest levels they reached during his tenure in office. Given this public response, many pollsters, pundits, and scholars argued that news coverage of the scandal must have been largely irrelevant to the public. Our view counters these claims by advancing a theory that recognizes that citizens' political preferences are influenced substantially by frames and cues provided by news media. To test our ideas, we draw upon three types of data, all from January 1993 to March 1999: ( a ) a longitudinal content analysis of major news media, ( b ) a time-trend of opinion polls on presidential job approval, and ( c ) monthly estimates of real disposable personal income, seasonally adjusted. Analyses reveal that news media emphasis upon and framing of certain issue regimes—to the framing of the scandal in terms of the strategic motives of conservative elites.
This book offers a careful examination of the politics of social policy in an era of austerity and conservative governance. Focusing on the administrations of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, Pierson provides a compelling explanation for the welfare state's durability and for the few occasions where each government was able to achieve significant cutbacks. The programmes of the modern welfare state - the 'policy legacies' of previous governments - generally proved resistant to reform. Hemmed in by the political supports that have developed around mature social programmes, conservative opponents of the welfare state were successful only when they were able to divide the supporters of social programmes, compensate those negatively affected, or hide what they were doing from potential critics. The book will appeal to those interested in the politics of neo-conservatism as well as those concerned about the development of the modern welfare state. It will attract readers in the fields of comparative politics, public policy, and political economy.
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.
Theory: This paper develops and applies an issue ownership theory of voting that emphasizes the role of campaigns in setting the criteria for voters to choose between candidates. It expects candidates to emphasize issues on which they are advantaged and their opponents are less well regarded. It explains the structural factors and party system variables which lead candidates to differentially emphasize issues. It invokes theories of priming and framing to explain the electorate's response. Hypotheses: Issue emphases are specific to candidates; voters support candidates with a party and performance based reputation for greater competence on handling the issues about which the voter is concerned. Aggregate election outcomes and individual votes follow the problem agenda. Method: Content analysis of news reports, open-ended voter reports of important problems, and the vote are analyzed with graphic displays and logistic regression analysis for presidential elections between 1960 and 1992. Results: Candidates do have distinctive patterns of problem emphases in their campaigns; election outcomes do follow the problem concerns of voters; the individual vote is significantly influenced by these problem concerns above and beyond the effects of the standard predictors.
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
constituencies.
Why and how do political actors pursue risky welfare state reforms, in spite of the institutional mechanisms and political resistance that counteract change? This is one of the key puzzles of contemporary welfare state research, which is brought about by the absence of a complete account that identifies both the cause and causal mechanisms of risky reforms. In this article we offer a remedy for this lacuna. Prospect theory teaches us that political actors will only undertake risky reforms if they consider themselves to be in a losses domain, that is when their current situation is unacceptable. Next, we discuss the strategies that political actors use to avoid the blame associated with risky reforms. These provide the causal mechanisms linking cause and effect. The sudden outburst of risky reforms in formerly 'immovable' Italy provides an empirical illustration of our account.
Public officials are not passive bystanders in the electoral process. Rather, they actively try to shape or manage citizens' perceptions of events (particularly those involving negative outcomes) through explanations or accounts. I argue that consideration of citizens' understandings of political accountability and how these are shaped by public officials represent critical missing components of models of electoral behavior. The distinction between excuses and justifications provides a valuable conceptual framework for understanding the impact of political accounts on a variety of judgments and psychological processes. I examine satisfaction with various excuses and justifications and their impact on subsequent evaluations of the official.
Political strategy matters – especially in the case of unpopular reforms. This is the main argument of this article. It shows that the analysis of political strategies gives complementary insights into the causal mechanisms of reform politics. It helps us to understand how political actors successfully implement unpopular reforms. The article provides empirical evidence for this claim by means of an analysis of adjustment efforts in Sweden, Belgium, Canada and France during the 1990s. It is shown that governments acted strategically in two areas: they used strategic manoeuvres in the political sphere in order to circumvent veto players. And they employed strategic organisation and communication in the public sphere in order to dampen the risk of being punished by voters for the implemented policies.
The quantitative strand of social policy research suffers from a double deficit: on the one hand, analyses of aggregate expenditure dominate, and on the other hand, most studies of replacement rates focus on unemployment or sickness benefits, while pensions are excluded. This paper addresses the said deficit firstly by discussing the pension sectors’ theoretical peculiarities and by proposing two hypotheses: one on the retrenchment of pension replacement rates and one on the role played by political parties in implementing it. Secondly, after a brief literature review and an outline of our methodological approach, we present regression results of replacement rate changes in 18 developed democracies. Our findings show considerably smaller cuts of pensions than of unemployment or sickness benefits, and striking differences regarding partisan effects between the sectors.
Policy makers use political strategies when implementing public policies. This is the result of an increasing number of empirical studies-especially from research on unpopular welfare state reforms. However, an overarching theoretical framework systematizing the existing work is still missing from the literature. The present article tackles this shortcoming. Our approach starts from the assumption that the electoral consequences of policies result from the combination of two dimensions: the popularity of a policy and the attribution of responsibility for that policy. Drawing on theories of electoral support and political behavior, we unfold a catalog of strategies according to how they operate to influence these two dimensions.
Welfare state research tends to assume strong and enduring public support for welfare state institutions. We challenge this assumption and show that in times of economic crisis, positive welfare state attitudes are confronted with conflicting preferences for improvement of labour market performance. We argue that such movements in public opinion have led to issue competition among major political parties and subsequent radical reform of unemployment insurance in two least‐likely cases. In both Germany and Sweden, incumbent governments were losing voters' confidence as a result of high and persistent unemployment. In Germany, the social democratic government saw falling competence ratings at the same time as the issue of unemployment was highly salient among voters. In order to win back confidence, the party shifted its policy stance and introduced reforms which reshaped the unemployment insurance system. In Sweden, the situation was similar with falling ratings for the social democratic government and high levels of salience for the issue of unemployment among voters. When the government did not introduce reforms, the opposition moved in and won issue ownership, and subsequently the election, on an agenda of radical reform.
Most political science accounts assume that governments in Western democracies avoid unpopular reforms to protect their re‐election chances. Nevertheless, governments sometimes embark on electorally risky reforms – even in times when they have no slack in the polls. In this article, it is argued that pursuing unpopular reforms can be a perfectly rational strategy for vote‐seeking governments. Based on a simple game theoretical model that compares strategic framing with the classic blame avoidance strategy, it is demonstrated that unpopular policy reforms allow governments to pursue gains of both policy and votes by opting for a highly visible strategy of reframing the substantive reform issue in question. This general argument is illustrated with the substantial 2011 retrenchment of Danish early retirement benefits. This particular welfare state programme was highly popular. Nevertheless, the incumbent Liberal prime minister proposed to abolish it only a few months prior to a national election while his government was trailing significantly in the polls.
This article argues that welfare state restructuring, which is highly unpopular among voters, is politically feasible if government and opposition parties cooperate informally with one another. Contrary to what key arguments made in the literature assert, restructuring does not require the formation of a grand coalition to diffuse blame from voters. Informal cooperation between parties is a distinctive blame-avoiding strategy, which differs not only from other party-oriented strategies such as building a grand coalition, but also from voter-oriented ones, such as obfuscation and exemption. By analysing the politics of pension reform in Germany, this article shows that informal cooperation enables political parties to restructure the welfare state without running the risk of electoral failure.
This essay seeks to lay the foundation for an understanding of
welfare state retrenchment. Previous discussions have generally
relied, at least implicitly, on a reflexive application of theories
designed to explain welfare state expansion. Such an approach is
seriously flawed. Not only is the goal of retrenchment (avoiding
blame for cutting existing programs) far different from the goal of
expansion (claiming credit for new social benefits), but the welfare
state itself vastly alters the terrain on which the politics of social
policy is fought out. Only an appreciation of how mature social
programs create a new politics can allow us to make sense of the
welfare state's remarkable resilience over the past two decades of
austerity. Theoretical argument is combined with quantitative and
qualitative data from four cases (Britain, the United States,
Germany, and Sweden) to demonstrate the shortcomings of
conventional wisdom and to highlight the factors that limit or
facilitate retrenchment success.
This paper studies the claim that social policy retrenchment has tremendous electoral consequences. It analyzes the electoral impact of social policy attitudes in a comparative design (20 elections in Western OECD countries between 2001 and 2006). I find that punishment is conditional on the performance of governments, indicating that people punish or reward a government for its past actions. However, empirical comparison shows this to be true not only for social policy, but for all types of issues. This study shows that social policy does not have the outstanding relevance for voters as assumed by the social policy literature; accordingly, the electoral impact is only limited and not equally strong in all contexts. The context shapes the link between social policy attitudes and vote choice, but the variance in effect strength is not explained by differences in the institutional setting or the campaign saliency of social policy.
The article introduces the distinction between labour market- and life course-related social programmes and discusses why it matters politically. Life course risks are by and large uncorrelated with the income distribution, so the median voter will be comparably favourable towards generous provision. Left- and right-wing governments will therefore enact similar policies, and constitutional veto points will play no role for provision because no political actors will use them to block change. The median voter is less favourable towards labour market-related programmes that protect against risks that first and foremost adversely affect low-income individuals. Right-wing governments therefore have greater leeway to implement retrenchment on labour market-related programmes. Yet, in the event of external shocks to the labour market like rising unemployment and globalization, the median voter becomes gradually more exposed to labour market risks, which in turn reduces the room for right-wing retrenchment.
Public opinion often depends on which frames elites choose to use. For example, citizens’ opinions about a Ku Klux Klan rally may depend on whether elites frame it as a free speech issue or a public safety issue. An important concern is that elites face few constraints to using frames to influence and manipulate citizens’ opinions. Indeed, virtually no work has investigated the limits of framing effects. In this article, I explore these limits by focusing on one particular constraint—the credibility of the frame’s source. I present two laboratory experiments that suggest that elites face a clear and systematic constraint to using frames to influence and manipulate public opinion.
What is the effect of democratic competition on the power of elites to frame public opinion? We address this issue first by defining the range of competitive contexts that might surround any debate over a policy issue. We then offer a theory that predicts how audiences, messages, and competitive environments interact to influence the magnitude of framing effects. These hypotheses are tested using experimental data gathered on the opinions of adults and college students toward two policy issues—the management of urban growth and the right of an extremist group to conduct a rally. Our results indicate that framing effects depend more heavily on the qualities of frames than on their frequency of dissemination and that competition alters but does not eliminate the influence of framing. We conclude by discussing the implications of these results for the study of public opinion and democratic political debate.
A central requirement for explaining many political outcomes is an understanding of how advocates manipulate the preferences of voters on various policy proposals. A major tactic by which the advocates of a policy proposal attempt to influence the preferences of voters is the presentation of “interpretations” about the various consequences of the policy proposal. Despite the central role of interpretations in political manipulations, little is known about when and why a particular interpretation will be effective. We argue that the effectiveness of different interpretations depends significantly on the political beliefs and schemata of voters and on the chronic cognitive accessibility of the interpretations, but only in certain information environments. We develop three hypotheses and devise two experiments to investigate them. In each experiment, registered voters read interpretations of policy proposals and then evaluated the proposals. The interpretations were drawn from the actual public debate on four public policy issues. The results of the experiments were consistent with the hypotheses. The implications of these results for electoral decision making are discussed. The potential applicability of the results to elite decision making, especially in legislative settings, is also explored.
Politicians are motivated primarily by the desire to avoid blame for unpopular actions rather than by seeking to claim credit for popular ones. This results from voters' ‘negativity bias’: their tendency to be more sensitive to real or potential losses than they are to gains. Incentives to avoid blame lead politicians to adopt a distinctive set of political strategies, including agenda limitation, scapegoating, ‘passing the buck’ and defection (‘jumping on the bandwagon’) that are different than those they would follow if they were primarily interested in pursuing good policy or maximizing credit-claiming opportunities. These strategies in turn lead to important policy effects, including a surrender of discretion even when it offers important credit-claiming opportunities.
This article challenges the dominant assumptions in the literature that cutting social policy incurs voter wrath and that political parties can efficiently internalise electoral fallout with blame avoidance strategies. Drawing on the diverse literature on the role of partisanship in the period of permanent austerity, several partisan hypotheses on the relationship between social policy change and electoral outcomes are posited. The results indicate that religious and liberal parties gain votes, and thereby are able to ‘claim credit’, for retrenching social policy. None of the other coefficients for the effect of social policy cuts reach significance, raising the question of whether parties excel at blame avoidance or the public fails to place blame in the first place.
Public opinion often depends on how elites choose to frame issues. For example, citizens' opinions about a Ku Klux Klan rally may depend on whether elites frame the event as a free-speech issue or a public safety issue. Past research has focused largely on documenting the size of framing effects in uncontested settings. By contrast, there has been little research on framing in competitive environments in which individuals receive multiple frames representing alternative positions on an issue. We take an initial step toward understanding how frames work in competitive environments by integrating research on attitude structure and persuasion. Our theory of framing identifies the key individual and contextual parameters that determine which of many competing frames will have an effect on public opinion.
We investigate the extent to which using students as experimental participants creates problems for causal inference. First, we discuss the impact of student subjects on a study’s internal and external validity. In contrast to common claims, we argue that student subjects do not intrinsically pose a problem for a study’s external validity. Second, we use simulations to identify situations when student subjects are likely to constrain experimental inferences. We show that such situations are relatively limited; any convenience sample poses a problem only when the size of an experimental treatment effect depends upon a characteristic on which the convenience sample has virtually no variance. Third, we briefly survey empirical evidence that provides guidance on when researchers should be particularly attuned to taking steps to ensure appropriate generalizability from student subjects. We conclude with a discussion of the practical implications of our findings. In short, we argue that student subjects are not an inherent problem to experimental research; moreover, the burden of proof - of student subjects being a problem - should lie with critics rather than experimenters.
Under which conditions and to what extent do governments pursue unpopular social policy reforms for which they might be punished in the next election? This article shows that there exists substantial cross-cabinet variation in the degree to which governments take unpopular measures and argues that current studies cannot adequately explain this variation. Using insights from prospect theory, a psychological theory of choice under risk, this study hypothesises that governments only engage in unpopular reform if they face a deteriorating socio-economic situation, a falling political position, or both. If not, they shy away from the risk of reform. A fuzzy-set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fs/QCA) of the social policy reform activities pursued by German, Dutch, Danish and British cabinets between 1979 and 2005 identifies a deteriorating socio-economic situation as necessary for unpopular reform. It is only sufficient for triggering reform, however, if the political position is also deteriorating and/or the cabinet is of rightist composition. This study's findings further the scholarly debate on the politics of welfare state reform by offering a micro-foundation that helps one to understand what induces political actors aspiring to be re-elected to engage in electorally risky unpopular reform.
Recent studies of welfare state retrenchment have argued that policy makers can win public support for welfare state reform by framing the issue in terms of deservingness of welfare recipients. However, this literature has not tested the argument at the individual level. Using a Scandinavian context, this experimental study investigates how alternative framing of a welfare state retrenchment proposal affects citizens’ perception of welfare recipients’ deservingness, policy support and whether perceptions of deservingness mediate policy opinion. A news story was manipulated to present welfare recipients as either deserving or undeserving of welfare benefits. This issue framing affected citizens’ perception of deservingness as well as support for retrenchment policy. Opinion change was partly explained by differences in perceptions of deservingness. These results provide strong support for the effectiveness of the deservingness frame.
The shape and aggregate output of welfare states within many developed democracies have been fairly resilient in the face of profound shifts in their national settings, and with respect to the global environment of the past 20 years. This contrasts with once-widespread predictions of universal retrenchment, and it has broadened debates over trends in social policymaking to focus on the phenomenon of welfare state persistence. Research on persistence has not, to date, directly considered the possibility that welfare states survive because of enduring popular support. Building from recent welfare state theory and the emerging literature on policy responsiveness, we consider the possibility that mass public opinion—citizens’ aggregate policy preferences—are a factor behind welfare state persistence. We analyze a new country-level data set, controlling for established sources of welfare state development, and buttressing estimates by testing for endogeneity with respect to policy preferences. We find evidence that the temporal distribution of policy preferences has contributed to persistence tendencies in a number of welfare states. We discuss results in conclusion, suggesting the utility of further consideration of linkages between mass opinion and social policy in cross-national perspective.
Do incumbent parties that retrench the welfare state lose votes during the next election? That is the guiding question for our paper. We analyse elections and social policy reforms in 18 established OECD democracies from 1980 to 2003. We show that there is no strong and systematic punishment for governments which cut back welfare state entitlements. The likelihood of losing votes is the same for governments that retrench the welfare state as for those that do not. Rather, electoral punishment is conditional on whether governments have the chance to stretch retrenchment over a longer period of time, and whether social policy cuts are made an issue in the electoral campaign. If other political parties and the mass media do not put the theme on the agenda of the campaign, and if the retrenchment can be carried out in small steps during a longer governmental term, governments may considerably reduce welfare state effort without fear of major electoral consequences.
The worldâs richer democracies all provide such public benefits as pensions and health care, but why are some far more generous than others? And why, in the face of globalization and fiscal pressures, has the welfare state not been replaced by another model? Reconsidering the myriad issues raised by such pressing questions, Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza contend here that public opinion has been an important, yet neglected, factor in shaping welfare states in recent decades. Analyzing data on sixteen countries, Brooks and Manza find that the preferences of citizens profoundly influence the welfare policies of their governments and the behavior of politicians in office. Shaped by slow-moving forces such as social institutions and collective memories, these preferences have counteracted global pressures that many commentators assumed would lead to the welfare stateâs demise. Moreover, Brooks and Manza show that cross-national differences in popular support help explain why Scandinavian social democracies offer so much more than liberal democracies such as the United States and the United Kingdom. Significantly expanding our understanding of both public opinion and social policy in the worldâs most developed countries, this landmark study will be essential reading for scholars of political economy, public opinion, and democratic theory.
Analysis of decision making under risk has been dominated by expected utility theory, which generally accounts for people's actions. Presents a critique of expected utility theory as a descriptive model of decision making under risk, and argues that common forms of utility theory are not adequate, and proposes an alternative theory of choice under risk called prospect theory. In expected utility theory, utilities of outcomes are weighted by their probabilities. Considers results of responses to various hypothetical decision situations under risk and shows results that violate the tenets of expected utility theory. People overweight outcomes considered certain, relative to outcomes that are merely probable, a situation called the "certainty effect." This effect contributes to risk aversion in choices involving sure gains, and to risk seeking in choices involving sure losses. In choices where gains are replaced by losses, the pattern is called the "reflection effect." People discard components shared by all prospects under consideration, a tendency called the "isolation effect." Also shows that in choice situations, preferences may be altered by different representations of probabilities. Develops an alternative theory of individual decision making under risk, called prospect theory, developed for simple prospects with monetary outcomes and stated probabilities, in which value is given to gains and losses (i.e., changes in wealth or welfare) rather than to final assets, and probabilities are replaced by decision weights. The theory has two phases. The editing phase organizes and reformulates the options to simplify later evaluation and choice. The edited prospects are evaluated and the highest value prospect chosen. Discusses and models this theory, and offers directions for extending prospect theory are offered. (TNM)
This paper investigates the conditions under which political framing can render welfare restructuring more palatable. I start by asking two research questions. What are the necessary (albeit perhaps insufficient) conditions that allow leaders successfully to frame welfare reform? To what extent are these conditions evident across welfare regimes? I identify four variables that affect leaders' opportunities for framing social policy: (1) extant frames, (ii) actors, (iii) institutions and (iv) policy arena. After examining the four dominant types of frames found across affluent societies, I review the discursive politics surrounding ThePersonalResponsibilityandWorkOpportunityReconciliationAct as a case where all four conditions for framing welfare reform coalesced.
The risk game and the blame game. Government and Opposition
- C Hood
Hood, C., 2002, The risk game and the blame game. Government and Opposition, 37(1), pp. 15-37. doi:10.1111/
goop.2002.37.issue-1
The politics of ideas in reforming the dutch disability fund
- P Kurzer
Kurzer, P., 2013, The politics of ideas in reforming the dutch disability fund. Governance, 26(2), pp. 283-305.
doi:10.1111/gove.2013.26.issue-2
The politics of pain
- L A Pal
- K Weaver
Pal, L. A. and Weaver, K. (Eds) 2003, The politics of pain, in: The Government Taketh Away (Washington DC:
Georgetown University Press).