"Beyond Left and Right": the New Partisan Politics of Welfare

F. Ross

Working Papers from European Institute - European Forum

Abstract: The "new politics of the welfare state", the term coined by Pierson (1996) to differentiate between the popular politics of welfare expansion and the unpopular politics of retrenchment, emphasizes a number of factors that distinguish countries in their capacity to pursue contentious measures and avoid electoral blame. Policy structures, vested interests, and insitutions play a prominant role in accounting for cross-national differences in leaders ability to diffuse responsability for divisive initiatives. This paper contends that parties are relevant to "new politics" and that, under specified insitutional conditions, their impact is counterintuitive.

Keywords: SOCIAL WELFARE; PUBLIC POLICY; SOCIAL POLICY (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D60 H53 I31 I32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 1999
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fth:euroef:99/4

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