Congruent with whom? Parties’ issue emphases and voter preferences in welfare politics

ABSTRACT

Over the last decades we have witnessed a growing support coalition for the welfare state and at the same time an increase in conflict over its specific design. In this context of high but specific support for social policy, parties engage in issue competition. The question therefore arises as to how well parties’ social policy issue emphases match voters’ preferences and which voters’ preferences do they match? Building on issue yield theory, I argue that parties emphasise bridge policies; policies that enjoy high support both among partisans and among the general electorate. Using an original online-survey and a new and fine-grained coding of social policy emphasis in party manifestos from seven West European countries, I find that parties, irrespective of party family, are indeed congruent with both supporters and the general electorate. Hence, general congruence is quite high, but specifically directed towards broadly supported issues.

KEYWORDS:

• issue yield
• radical right parties
• voter-party congruence
• welfare state preferences

Acknowledgements

Previous versions of this article have been presented at the DVPW ‘Comparative Politics’ Section Conference in March 2019 in Munich, at EPSA in June 2019 in Belfast, and at SPSA in February 2020 in Lucerne, as well as at the University of Zurich and at the European University Institute in Florence. I wish to thank the participants at these occasions for helpful comments. I am especially grateful for valuable input from Macarena Ares, Lorenzo De Sio, Matthias Enggist, Christopher Green-Pedersen, Silja Häusermann, Mikko Kuisma, Line Rennwald, Maxime Walder, Till Weber, and three anonymous reviewers.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 See online appendix for an overview of parties and manifestos included.

2 Social assistance, family policy (excluding ECEC), healthcare, education (excluding ECEC and tertiary education)

3 An additional sixth field ('Services for the social and labour market integration of immigrants’) was omitted in this paper since it was not considered in the refined coding of party manifestos. It was left out because it focuses on policy design (specific target group) rather than policy field (integration could be addressed via ALMP, education, or other).

4 Even though these items were demanding for respondents, the quality of answers is high (see online appendix).

5 Including party fixed effects does not change the results (see online appendix).

6 CL=Social democratic + Green; CR=Conservative + Liberal

Additional information

Funding

This research benefits from funding of the European Research Council (ERC) with a Starting Grant for the project ‘WELFAREPRIORITIES’, PI Prof. Silja Häusermann, University of Zurich, Grant n° 716075; http://welfarepriorities.eu/

Notes on contributors

Michael Pinggera

Michael Pinggera is a PhD researcher in the Department of Political Science at the University of Zurich.