From Public to Policy: The Conditioning Role of Electoral Competitiveness

Mark Kayser and Jochen Rehmert From public to policy: The conditioning role of electoral competitiveness Parties, not public opinion, enact policy. Employing a new dynamic and party-level measure of electoral competitiveness based on political polls, we argue that the effect of public opinion on policy is conditioned by the political incentives of parties.  Public opinion alone is insufficient to change policy when it is unlikely to improve or forestall deterioration in parties' electoral and political fortunes. Using data on labor market policies (ILO) and welfare entitlements (Scruggs), we demonstrate that political parties are more likely to adopt politically popular policies when electoral competitiveness is high and risk controversial reforms when electoral competitiveness is low. This paper underscores the importance of context in policy formation and highlights the advantages of recent advances in measuring electoral competitiveness.