Comparative political economy scholars claim that party politics is irrelevant for modern welfare state development. Economic stress, social change and new patterns of electoral behavior limit governments in producing policy outcomes desired by their traditional core constituency. Building on a theoretical model emphasizing the electoral incentives of political parties, we argue that governments are motivated to appeal to core constituencies and the median voter. They do so by proposing specific policy measures in selected policy domains. It remains, for example, important for centre-left parties to appear as beneficiaries of the welfare state. Yet structural economic stress constrain governments from producing distinct policy outcomes, and we expect, by implication, partisan differences in the legislative arena to have no effect on real world welfare policy developments. This theoretical proposition is researched by analyzing governments’ legislative strategies and policy outcomes in the Netherlands and Denmark 1975-2008.
