Winner-takes-all politics? Issue politics around elections; contrasting consensus and majoritarian policy styles

In terms of winning policy issues, there is usually hardly a difference between having a large or a small majority. Politicians may therefore frequently have the short-term incentive to immediately capitalise on recently gained small majority support. They have limited incentives on issues on which large majorities of party-political and interest groups agree as they may be able to free ride on future initiatives of others anyway. This potentially problematic agenda-setting dynamic of politicians prioritising their own issues first rather than focussing on those with the broadest possible political support is commonly identified to be especially strong in ‘winner-takes-all’ majoritarian systems such as the United Kingdom and the United States compared to more consensual power-sharing styles in several continental European countries such as Germany and the Netherlands. Our paper focusses on the interest groups that strategically respond to volatile political majorities. We examine the interest group and party political attention around the 2016/17 elections in the US, UK, Germany and The Netherlands. We expect that when the breadth of support for an issue is around 50%, it is likely to be attended to, but when it is much higher or much lower, it will largely be avoided politically. This tendency is expected to be lower in Germany and the Netherlands. We rely on several hundred interviews with lobbyists in the respective countries and additionally account for the particular issue-focus and outcomes of the four elections studied.