The Politics of Benefit Conditionality

My paper is concerned with explaining differences in the strictness of conditions and sanctions attached to unemployment benefits. I make use of a novel dataset covering 22 OECD countries and the years 1980 through 2012, which means my analysis of the determinants of these policies is thus far unparalleled in terms of cross-sectional and over-time coverage. Benefit conditions like requirements to accept lower wages or to be occupationally mobile directly affect the extent to which benefits decommodify workers and protect their skills during periods of unemployment. My analysis will thus shed new light on central theories of the welfare state. In my analysis, I evaluate the hypothesis that stricter conditions and sanctions are mainly introduced by right-wing governments. I also evaluate the hypothesis that the effect of partisanship is conditional on a country's electoral system since right-wing governments are found to be more frequent in majoritarian systems.