Political Partianship and Welfare State Reform in Advanced Industrial Societies

James P. AllanLyle Scruggs

What you should remember after the

presentation: Beware of expenditure data!

Retrenchment exists!

Right politics matter!

1. Used in many studies, (OECD, but also others) – there are important differences across time series

An outcome measure – level of unemployment, size of client groups matter

Normally measured as a percentage of GDP

1.Pros: Easily available across time and countries Cover the entire welfare state, all programs and all

aspects Provide a summary measure across different aspects

Social expenditure data

1. Problems: Other factors, GDP, level of unemployment can have a

strong effect The spending implication of many decisions are long-

term – for instance pension reforms Comparability problems when breaks them down into

subcategories In sum Important datasource, pros and cons of any type of data Social expenditure are often used without any theoretical

reflection – capture retrenchment better than reform. Beware of gross compared to net!

Method

Unemployment insurance and sickness benefit replacement rates for 18 countries (75-99)

More retrenchment than other cross-national studies.

Estimating the effects of governmental partianship on changes in income replacement rates (net) in unemployment and sickness programs

Partianship effect (rigth cabinet) on entitlements

Graphs

Graph: Replacement rate: to what extent does benefit replace income

Table: Left/right parties pos/neg association with growing replacement rates = more/less resistant to WS retrenchment

UNEMPL OY MENT REPL ACEMENT RATES

-40

-30

-20

-10

0

10

20

30

40

C OV 31%-------------22%

RE

TR

EN

CH

ME

NT

EX

PA

NS

ION

D IFFE R E NC E 1999-MA X IMUM DIFFE R E NC E 1999-1975

Independent Variables

Allan & Scru-ggs

Left Cabinet Right Cabinet

Other testsConverg-

ence?Pre-

reces-sion

Post-reces-sion

Pre-reces-sion

Post-reces-sion

Initial Level of Replacement Rate - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Right Cabinet Share - - - - - -

Left Cabinet Share + +++

GLOB/ Trade Openness - - - -

GLOB/ Financial Openness -

CONTR/ Veto Points +

CONTR/ Corporatism + +++ ++ ++ ++

Unemployment Rate -

GDP Growth +

Deficits - -

Place & Critisism Against path dependency (Pierson, New Politics,

Actor-centered Institutionalism) Rather siding with Clayton and Pontusson

(Power-centered Theory), who also studied benefits and found retrenchment. (Incremental changes, anti-WS coalitions, weakening WS)

COV of unemployment: ”Strong negative convergence pattern” 75: 31 % variation in the 18 countries replacement. 99: 22 % variation, a bit less, but a strong neg…? 9%

COV of sickness: actually divergence..

Critisism APW: Average (?) of net household of 1

single worker and family of four with 1 nonemployed adult. Male breadwinner..

A&S says right wing government will change WS. If so, are not the long time lapses between their measurements of importance? They give critisism to others for long time lapses. Is Scandinavian retrenchment consistent with a fragmentated WC?

Critisism

Do the 18 countries have the same kind of facilitating labour market schemes? Taken into account how long people are unemployed? Some countries with more unemployment than others? Universalism/residualism? Explanation for retrenchment in benefits?

If retrenchment is blame avoidance (PP), is then right wing better at this..?

What you should remember after the

presentation: Beware of expenditure data!

Retrenchment exists!

Right politics matter!