Article

Support for Policies on Entrepreneurship and Self-Employment among Parties and Coalition Governments

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Abstract

We argue that political parties take not only the economic conditions into account when developing a position on entrepreneurship and self‐employment but also consider the “heritage” of a socialist state, which can influence the preferences of voters regarding this issue area. We test our hypotheses on the basis of an analysis of election manifestos and coalition agreements. We focus on the German case since unification allows for comparing electorates socialized in a market economy in the West German states and in a socialist economy in East Germany by holding the institutional setting constant. The results support our hypotheses that growing economic problems increase the saliency of entrepreneurship and self‐employment and that differences between parties exist: Christian democratic and liberal parties emphasize entrepreneurship and self‐employment in their manifestos more than green or socialist parties. In addition, governments including Christian democratic and liberals agree on more market‐liberal policies in coalition agreements compared to left‐wing governments. Related Articles Wenzelburger , Georg , and Helge Staff . 2016 . “.” Politics & Policy 44 (): 319 ‐ 350 . http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12151/abstract König , Pascal , and Georg Wenzelburger . 2014 . “.” Politics & Policy 42 (): 400 ‐ 430 . http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12076/abstract Rennie , Henry G . 2008 . “.” Politics & Policy 36 (): 193 ‐ 196 . http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2007.00100.x/full Related Media . https://www.cupesse.eu https://www.mzes.uni-mannheim.de

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... [Insert 15031-2188-003_Figure_002 Here] Source: Tosun et al. (2017). ...
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Technical Report
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A new and wide-ranging empirical overview of party policy in 47 modern democracies, including all of the new democracies of Eastern Europe. It updates and radically extends Policy and Party Competition (1992), which established itself as a key mainstream data source for all political scientists exploring the policy positions of political parties. This essential text is divided into three clear parts: Part I introduces the study, themes and methodology Part II deals in depth with the wide range of issues involved in estimating and analyzing the policy positions of key political actors. Part III is the key data section that identifies key policy dimensions across the 47 countries, detailing their party positions and median legislators, and is complemented by graphical representations of each party system. This book is an invaluable reference for all political scientists, particularly those interested in party policy and comparative politics.
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Chapter
Cabinets and Coalition Bargaining: The Democratic Life Cycle in Western Europe provides a comprehensive analysis of coalition politics in Western Europe over the post-1945 period. It champions a dynamic approach using bargaining and transaction cost theory to understand the ‘life cycle ‘ of parliamentary politics. After a review of the literature the theory chapter addresses the roles of bargaining and transaction costs in coalition governance. Eight comparative chapters address the topics of government formation, cabinet membership, coalition agreements, portfolio allocation, conflict management, cabinet termination and duration, and the electoral consequences of coalition politics. The book is based on the most comprehensive data set ever employed in coalition studies, which includes both coalitional and single-party countries and governments. Each chapter provides a comparative overview of its topic and state-of-the art statistical analysis. Conceptually and empirically the study argues for an integrated approach to coalition politics, stressing six clusters of explanatory factors: country-specific and temporal circumstances, ‘structural attributes ‘, actors ‘ preferences, institutions, the bargaining environment, and ‘critical events ‘. While the importance of different causal factors varies between the various phases of the parliamentary life cycle, no facet of coalition politics can be understood without reference to several of these factors. Comparative Politics is a series for students and teachers of political science that deals with contemporary issues in comparative government and politics. The General Editors are David M. Farrell, Jean Monnet Chair in European Politics and Head of School of Social Sciences, University of Manchester and Alfio Mastropaolo, University of Turin. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research.
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Unterscheidet sich die nordrhein-westfalische CDU eines Jurgen Ruttgers programmatisch von der hessischen Union unter Fuhrung von Roland Koch? Steht die SPD im Saarland weiter links von der Mitte als die Sozialdemokraten im benachbarten Rheinland-Pfalz? Wenn ja, warum ist das der Fall? Die vorliegende Studie untersucht die bundeslandsspezifischen Eigenheiten des Parteienwettbewerbs anhand einer Analyse aller zwischen 1990 und 2010 verfassten Landtagswahlprogramme. Dies geschieht vor dem Hintergrund der historischen Entwicklung der Parteiensysteme in den Landern einerseits und auf Grundlage theoretischer Modelle andererseits. Die Ergebnisse zeichnen ein differenziertes Bild des Parteienwettbewerbs im deutschen Mehrebenensystem. Sie zeigen die Unterschiede in den programmatischen Positionen der Parteien in den verschiedenen Politikfeldern auf, die ihre Ursachen in der Sozialstruktur der jeweiligen Wahlerschaft, aber auch in taktischen Bestrebungen der Parteien bei Landtagswahlen haben. Die Eigenstandigkeit des regionalen Parteienwettbewerbs im Vergleich zum bundespolitischen zeigt sich schlieslich in der Bedeutung der inhaltlichen Ausrichtungen der Landesparteien fur die Regierungsbildung in den Bundeslandern.
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Scholars of coalition politics have increasingly begun to focus on conflict within coalitions. Here we examine the role of coalition agreements in managing intracoalitional conflict. We argue that there is a trade-off between making policy agreements at the coalition’s formation (e.g., by making very detailed policy platforms) and postponing the issue’s resolution by creating procedures for settling policy disputes. We argue that the trade-off is increasingly likely to be resolved in favor of relying on a formal dispute resolution mechanism when coalitions are ideologically heterogeneous and the coalition parties differ in size. We test our theory using data from the German Länder between 1990 and 2013. These data allow us to isolate the effects of the bargaining situation and ideology while holding the institutional context constant. The empirical results support our main argument: When intracoalition conflict is high, parties write shorter coalition contracts but are more likely to adopt procedures for conflict resolution.
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This book examines environmental policy change in twenty-eight Central and Eastern European and Latin American countries against a background of significant political and economic transformation over the past two decades. Through cross-regional comparison and a multi-methods approach, Jale Tosun investigates changes in the regulation of air, soil, and water pollution, genetically modified corn, and the sustainable management of forests. Tosun also looks at the relationship between system transformation and the creation of environmental procuracies in both parts of the world. Environmental Policy Change in Emerging Market Democracies demonstrates that, although political and economic transformations have positively affected environmental policy in both regions, the extent of policy change varies considerably across Central and Eastern Europe and Latin America. At the same time, as Tosun argues, economic integration has acted as a major driver of a stronger governmental enforcement commitment as expressed by the creation of environmental procuracies.
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German law and order policies have been described as exceptional compared to other Western industrialized countries in that they seem to have been immune to a general trend toward increased toughness. However, recent studies have cast some doubt on this finding. The present article addresses this divergence and contributes to the literature in two respects. First, drawing on a new dataset on German federal legislation on law and order (1994‐2013), we show that a slight trend toward tougher legislation is visible although talking about a “punitive turn” would be largely exaggerated. Second, we find that the explanation of this pattern is to be found in the peculiarities of the German political system which seems to have constrained any attempts to implement tougher policies: strong institutional veto points have hindered far‐reaching proposals from being adopted and have pushed German law and order policies toward a middle way. Related Articles Butz , Adam , Michael P. Fix , and Joshua L. Mitchell . 2015 . “.” Politics & Policy 43 (): 347 ‐ 377 . http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12116/abstract David , Charles‐Philippe. 2015 . “.” Politics & Policy 43 (): 163 ‐ 195 . http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12106/abstract Jenkins‐Smith , Hank C. , and Kerry G. Herron 2009 . “.” Politics & Policy 37 (): 1095‐1129. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2009.00215.x/abstract Related Media Film clip on preventive detention in Germany by the “Deutsche Welle.” http://www.dw.com/popups/mediaplayer/contentId_15046630_mediaId_6519215 Video report on preventive detention in Germany on dailymotion. http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2vbli7 Editorial on the crime drop in the Western world. http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21582004-crime-plunging-rich-world-keep-it-down-governments-should-focus-prevention-not Report on the crime drop in the rich world. http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21582041-rich-world-seeing-less-and-less-crime-even-face-high-unemployment-and-economic
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In modern democracies political parties exist because (1) they reduce transaction costs in the electoral, parliamentary and governmental arenas and (2) help overcome the dilemma of collective action. In Western Europe political parties are the central mechanism to make the constitutional chain of political delegation and accountability work in practice. Party representatives in public office are ultimately the agents of the extra-parliamentary party organization. In order to contain agency loss parties rely on party-internal mechanisms and the institutionalisation of party rights in public rules and, in contrast to US parties, they apply the full range of ex ante and ex post mechanisms. Generally, the role of party is weaker the further down the chain of delegation.
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Almost a quarter of a century after German unification, studies continue to uncover pervasive attachments to socialism in the former East. While these attachments have been a recurrent feature in analyses of political culture, surprisingly little is known about their sources. This article systematically explores the socio-political foundations of socialist values, by subjecting two theoretical perspectives to empirical testing. Political socialisation perspectives attribute these values to generationally based political identities that were forged in the pre-1989 era. Political economy perspectives, by contrast, stress how they have been reinforced by negative post-1989 evaluations of politics and materialism. Logistic regression analyses of ALLBUS data from 1991 to 2010 test nine hypotheses at the individual level, with the results confirming the following. First, there is evidence of an age-based structure to the foundations of socialist values: younger easterners are less likely to value socialism, but the evidence of this has emerged only recently. Second, equally important drivers of these values are support for parties on the left of the political spectrum and ideological self-placement. Third, economic factors have been selective and inconsistent predictors of socialist values. Overall, the research underscores the stability of socialist values in the German context, but argues that these values remain compatible with a political culture that is supportive of the democratic framework of unified Germany.
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This paper addresses the assertion that preferences for a comprehensive welfare state hamper and delay the emergence of a liberal-democratic culture in East Germany. Two questions are explored: first, has the impact of welfare-state values on support of the German democratic regime declined in East Germany since re-unification and adapted to the lower levels observed in West Germany? Second, are attitudes towards different welfare-state programmes equally important for citizens’ approval of the German democratic regime? Empirical analyses on the basis of representative public opinion surveys conducted between 1991 and 2012 confirm that the effect of welfare-state values in East Germany has converged to the smaller effect size observed in West Germany. Furthermore, attitudes to welfare-state programmes aimed at reducing income inequalities turn out to be a significant determinant of regime support in both parts of Germany. It is the higher demand for inequality-reducing governmental activities which still restrains the approval of the liberal-democratic regime among citizens in East Germany.
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▪ Abstract Policy makers in democracies have strong partisan and electoral incentives regarding the amount, nature, and timing of economic-policy activity. Given these incentives, many observers expected government control of effective economic policies to induce clear economic-outcome cycles that track the electoral calendar in timing and incumbent partisanship in character. Empirics, however, typically revealed stronger evidence of partisan than of electoral shifts in real economic performance and stronger and more persistent electoral and partisan shifts in certain fiscal, monetary, and other policies than in real outcomes. Later political-economic general-equilibrium approaches incorporated rational expectations into citizens' and policy makers' economic and political behavior to explain much of this empirical pattern, yet critical anomalies and insufficiencies remain. Moreover, until recently, both rational- and adaptive-expectations electoral-and-partisan-cycle work underemphasized crucial variation...
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Market deregulation has been integral to economic globalization, but we do not know very much about the comparative dimension of reform, i.e., the performance of liberal and co-ordinated market economies. Co-ordinated market economies are often assumed to perform poorly in deregulation reform, while such reform is path-dependent to the liberal market economy model. The article compares the trajectory of market deregulation in these different ‘varieties of capitalism’. Drawing on the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's ‘product market regulation indicators', the analysis shows that co-ordinated market economies have implemented more extensive deregulation than have the liberal market economies.
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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.
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The European Union (EU) has experienced an unprecedented economic and financial crisis since 2007, the effects of which form the object of analysis in this Special Issue. In particular, it addresses the questions of whether and how the crisis has served as an obstacle or an opportunity for further integration. It concentrates on two broad types of implications for the EU that are central elements of theories on integration and policy and public opinion change. First, the crisis has triggered events of proposed and actual change of policies and institutions. Second, the crisis and the EU’s response to it have had an impact on how citizens perceive the EU and its democratic legitimacy. Based on the contributions by scholars of European integration, this Special Issue concludes that, at least in the short run, the crisis has (overall) created an opportunity structure for European integration rather than an obstacle. At the same time, the contributions show the need for further research on the nexus of public opinion and politicization on the one side and institutional and policy change on the other.
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The European Union has become an important leader in international environmental affairs – particularly through the negotiation of multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs) with favourable terms. In this article,EU environmental leadership is studied from a new perspective, focusing on the ratification stage of environmental regime formation. Specifically, it investigates whether the EU is also capable of motivating third states to join its preferred MEAs.It is argued that third states join the EU’s preferred MEAs to signal their compliance with EU environmental standards in an effort to become eligible for various rewards that the EU could potentially offer, including a credible membership perspective, access to its lucrative markets, and aid and assistance. The argument is tested by examining the ratification behaviour of 25 non-EU Member States with regard to all 21 MEAs negotiated under the auspices of the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The results provide robust support for the theory that EU rewards motivate third states to ratify these treaties. The results withstand a number of statistical tests, even when alternative explanatory factors such as trade intensities, transnational communication and geographic proximity are controlled for.The study is the first large-scale demonstration of the EU’s external influence at the ratification stage of environmental regime formation. By identifying three different channels of EU influence, the research permits a more refined understanding of the EU’s role as a promoter of environmental protection standards.
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By the joining of the European Union (EU), the Central and Eastern European states had to align their agricultural biotechnology regulations to EU standards. In some cases, this meant the adoption of stricter regulations such as for the co-existence of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) and conventional crops. In other cases, harmonisation with EU rules entailed the need to give up more restrictive national regulation, for example: to allow the cultivation of a limited number of GMOs. This article examines why some Central and Eastern European states joined the group of Western European countries that instituted bans on the commercial cultivation of GMOs in the EU. This study contributes to the literature in two ways. First, it contends that the prohibition of the commercial cultivation of GMOs in some Central and Eastern European member states must be interpreted in light of the EU-wide public and political contestation of GMOs. Second, this piece of research shows that the ideological composition of governments matters in explaining the regulation of agricultural biotechnology. This second contribution allows for going beyond the predominant focus on public opinion when analysing the regulation of GMOs in the EU.
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The linkage between what parties promise during election campaigns and what governments deliver afterward is central to democratic theory. Research on this linkage concludes that there is a higher level of congruence between campaign promises and government actions than suggested by the conventional wisdom. This study is the first to describe and explain citizens’ evaluations of the fulfillment of election pledges in a way that is comparable with political scientists’ evaluations. The explanation of variation in citizens’ evaluations combines an objective factor, namely actual policy performance, and subjective factors, namely party identification, information resources, trust in political parties, and personal experience. The explanation is tested with panel data containing a unique set of questions on public opinion in Ireland. Actual policy performance is the most important factor affecting citizens’ evaluations. However, subjective factors often cause citizens’ evaluations to be more negative than actual policy performance suggests they should be.
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Many scholars have argued that partisan differences have disappeared since the 1980s due to ever increasing economic globalization and the deepening of European integration. Using a new primary data set on public ownership that contains detailed information on privatization in 20 countries between 1980 and 2007, we test these claims empirically in relation to state ownership. We pay special attention to the question of whether changes in the international political economy, notably globalization and different aspects of European integration, condition partisan politics. Our empirical findings suggest that political parties have continued to significantly shape national privatization trajectories in line with the classic partisan hypothesis. While partisan differences are somewhat reduced by the liberalizing and market-building efforts of the EU, globalization does not condition partisan effects at all. Moreover, the run-up to EMU even seems to have reinforced partisan differences.
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This paper studies the effects of political factors, mainly partisanship, on corporate taxes in the past 30years—a period of intensifying competitive pressure in Europe. The consideration of decision-makers who have ideological preferences yields in standard tax competition models the hypothesis that left-wing leaders set higher corporate tax rates. In the empirical analysis, we introduce an innovative measure of ideology derived from content analysis of party manifestos into the public finance literature. The results support our main hypothesis, but we also find evidence that the partisan effect declines in the course of time. Moreover, we are able to reveal that the observed effect is mainly driven by the legislatures' stance on welfare policies. Finally, we show that a higher degree of government fragmentation, as well as the leadership of a head of government with an educational background in law counteracts the general tendency to lower tax rates.
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Neoliberalism has become a hegemonic discourse with pervasive effects on ways of thought and political-economic practices to the point where it is now part of the commonsense way we interpret, live in, and understand the world. How did neoliberalism achieve such an exalted status, and what does it stand for? In this article, the author contends that neoliberalism is above all a project to restore class dominance to sectors that saw their fortunes threatened by the ascent of social democratic endeavors in the aftermath of the Second World War. Although neoliberalism has had limited effectiveness as an engine for economic growth, it has succeeded in channeling wealth from subordinate classes to dominant ones and from poorer to richer countries. This process has entailed the dismantling of institutions and narratives that promoted more egalitarian distributive measures in the preceding era.
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While the government parties had blamed the lingering burden of unification and the global economic crisis for the bulk of Germany's troubles in the 2002 election campaign, the topic of gridlock and policy reform is re-entering the agenda of German politics. From a scientific view, the analysis of Schröder's potential for policy change imposes some challenges. Germany needs reforms in many policy areas, in particular in the economic and societal domains. We present a new method to measure the positions of political parties on many issues. To identify the structural causes for German gridlock we apply the spatial model for legislative choice, which uncovers the room for manoeuvre. More precisely, we intend to show how much potential for policy change the Schröder government will have in economic, societal and foreign policy, and which policy position will be promoted by the Red–Green coalition in these areas.
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This article considers how parties can decide on policy when there is no reliable information about the effect of these decisions on voting. Where this is the case they must base their stands on a priori assumptions about appropriate priorities, namely on political ideologies. These indicate the general policy area a party should occupy, but do not give detailed guidance on which position to take within it. Five different ways of deciding on this, within ideological constraints, are specified. The predictions derived from these models well anticipate the actual decisions made by post-war parties in twenty democracies, as summarized in the unique spatial maps of policy movements published by the Manifesto Research Group of the European Consortium for Political Research.
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One of the most obvious questions to be asked about coalition governments is what these governments do, but this question has received little systematic attention from coalition researchers. A key element of coalition governance that may inform our empirical knowledge of the actions of government – their origin, organization and results – is coalition agreements. Party leaders negotiating a new government invest time in writing coalition agreements, and they do this because they expect beneficial effects: more efficiency in coalition policy making, and more peace in the government. Written coalition agreements are considered to reduce uncertainty and mistrust, and this is why they have become institutionalized in countries with coalition governments. This article presents an approach to the comparative study of coalition conflicts as they emerge during government formation, the management of this conflict through drafting coalition agreements and the effects of this during coalition life. The article sets out a number of expectations about the effects of types of deals that parties make; and asks what types of conflict management are most effective and what are the conditions for enforcement – structural and strategic? In recent comparative work, the features of coalition agreements and mechanisms of coalition governance in Western Europe have received attention. This article sets out, with empirical material, how further comparative research on coalition governance may be developed.
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1. Modeling party competition 2. How voters decide: the components of the unified theory of voting 3. Linking voter choice to party strategies: illustrating the role of non-policy factors 4. Factors influencing the link between party strategy and the variables 5. Policy competition under the unified theory: empirical applications to the 1988 French Presidential Election 6. Policy competition under the unified voting model: empirical applications to the 1989 Norwegian parliamentary election 7. The threat of abstention: candidate strategies and policy representation in US presidential elections 8. Candidate strategies with voter abstention in US presidential elections: 1980, 1984, 1988, 1996, and 2000 9. Policy competition in Britain: the 1997 general election 10. The consequences of voter projection: assimilation and contrast effects 11. Policy-seeking motivations of parties in two-party elections: theory 12. Policy-seeking motivations of parties in two-party elections: empirical analysis 13. Concluding remarks.
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Let me begin by defining terms. For present purposes, “democracy” is identified by the institutional features of universal adult suffrage, free and competitive elections to choose policy makers, multiple information sources, multiple political parties, and civil and political rights. “Democratic responsiveness” is what occurs when the democratic process induces the government to form and implement policies that the citizens want. When the process induces such policies consistently, we consider democracy to be of higher quality. Indeed, responsiveness in this sense is one of the justifications for democracy itself. 1 Responsiveness is not the only measure of democratic quality. Freedom, equality, vertical and horizontal accountability, and the rule of law contribute directly to the quality of democracy. These features also facilitate democratic responsiveness, as we shall see. Democratic responsiveness is a complex process, somewhat like a chain whose links are causally connected (see the figure below). It begins with the policy preferences held by citizens, and moves link by causal link through such stages as voting, election outcomes, the formation of policy-making coalitions, the process of policy making between elections, and public policies themselves. The process is ongoing and dynamic: The policies that are actually adopted and the consequences that flow from them affect the future preferences of citizens. Connections, whether actual or at least anticipated, must exist between each of the stages. The severing of any of the major linkages— G. Bingham Powell, Jr., is the Marie C. Wilson and Joseph C. Wilson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. His recent publications include Elections as Instruments of Democracy: Majoritarian and Proportional Visions (2000) and the coedited text Comparative Politics Today (2004). He is a former editor of the American Political Science Review.