Credit-Claiming or Blame Avoidance? Comparing the Relationship between Welfare State Beliefs and the Framing of Social Policy Retrenchment in France and Germany

Abstract

This study aims to theorize more concretely the micro-foundations of reform strategies with attention to the role of would-be reform winners in motivating strategy choice. The theory incorporates insights about multidimensional preferences into Weaver’s framework and builds on a growing literature on the framing of welfare state change in order to hypothesize that governments may face a vote-seeking incentive to justify retrenchment by appealing to aspects of the reform that their voters support. Recognizing the political relevance of a pro-retrenchment constituency sheds light on unappreciated political dynamics of welfare state retreat. Illustrative case studies of France and Germany provide insights into the relationship between voter preferences and the political strategies.

Keywords:

• comparative social policy
• blame avoidance
• public opinion
• political strategies

Acknowledgements

An earlier version of this paper was presented at the panel “Political Strategy, Political Leadership and the Politics of Welfare State Reform” at the ECPR General Conference 2013 in Bordeaux, where the idea for this special issue was born. I would like to thank all participants of the panel for their comments.

Notes

1. Similarly, governments can claim credit for blocking reforms by using strategic framing to appeal to aspects of reforms that voters oppose, in line with Weaver (1986).

2. Three questions come from the WVS. In two of them, statements are provided to respondents who are then asked to rate their response as either strongly agree (1), agree (2), neither agree or disagree (3), disagree (4) or strongly disagree (5). The statements include: “people who don’t work turn lazy” and “work is a duty towards society”. A final question asked whether respondents thought that the “unemployed should take any job” (1) or whether the “unemployed have a right to refuse a job” (10). Three questions come from the ISSP survey. The first question asks respondents: “Please show whether you would like to see more or less government spending in each area. Remember that if you say “much more”, it might require a tax increase to pay for it. Q.6g “Government should spend money: Unemployment benefits”. Response categories include spend much more (1), spend more (2), spend the same as now (3), spend less (4), spend much less (5). The second two questions ask: “On the whole, do you think it should or should not be the government’s responsibility to”: (1) “provide a decent standard of living for the unemployed” and (3) “reduce income differences between the rich and poor”. The answer categories include definitely should be (1), probably should be (2), probably should not be (3), definitely should not be (4).

3. All responses are recoded to range between −2 and 2 such that −2 indicates opposition to retrenchment and 2 indicates support for retrenchment. To clarify, someone is considered to support retrenchment if they agreed that people who don’t work turn lazy and thought that the unemployed should take any job.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Moira Nelson

Moira Nelson is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Lund University.