This Section is sponsored by two Standing Groups: The Standing Group on Political Economy and the Standing Group on The Politics of Welfare and Social Policy Reform. Beyond our Special Topic we also invite contributions from other areas of political economy and welfare state issues.
The Section aims to cover a broad range of theoretical, empirical and methodological approaches explaining contemporary dynamics in welfare state reform and adjacent policy areas. We especially invite political economy contributions as well as those from more psychological and institutional theories trying to explain why and how reforms happen. In the light of recent events we are very interested in the turn to nativist politics in welfare state reforms. But we are also interested, in more general, in the impact of globalisation, migration and rapid technological change, the role of party and electoral politics on welfare state reforms, or the development of innovative methodological tools to analyse and understand welfare state change. Levels of analysis can range from individual preferences for social protection to comparative analyses of national systems or developments at EU level. Given the importance and diversity of welfare state research within the field of political science, the section aims to be open to a wide variety of perspectives (including quantitative and qualitative research). Since the Section covers an inherently interdisciplinary topic, we also aim at facilitating scholarly exchange among political scientists with related academic disciplines.
We hope to offer up to 6 Panels. We would like to keep some slots completely open. As for the others we have three specific suggestions:
Exploring the Relationships Between Welfare and Migration Regimes.
This Panel aims to explore the influence of migration on the welfare state and vice-versa. So far, the literature has focused on a limited set of questions, namely how migration may undermine support for the welfare state, and welfare chauvinism. However, there is a much wider array of ways whereby migration and welfare state can interact. For instance, how do different welfare state regimes influence the nature and size of migration flows? How do different welfare institutions structure the preferences and choices of employers, trade unions and governments regarding labour migration policy? Since political support for the welfare state has traditionally relied on working class political support, how does the fact that a substantial share of the working class is constituted by immigrants deprived from a political voice influence welfare reform? (Potential presenters: Olaf van Vliet, Camilla Devitt,…)
National Populist Parties and the Welfare State
One of the most important developments in European party systems over the last thirty years has been the emergence and institutionalisation of populist radical-right parties. In a number of countries, these parties are no longer protest forces only, but have been pivotal players in the formation of government coalitions. This Panel analyses the role that these parties have played in welfare state reforms in West European countries. Have they been a support force for conservative or liberal parties willing to retrench the welfare state, or have they sought to relay the preferences of their largely working-class constituencies traditionally attached to welfare schemes? The Panel welcomes both qualitative and quantitative approaches dealing with party elites in government, parliament or with party voters. (Potential presenters: Line Rennwald, Laurenz Ennser-Edenastik,…)
Understanding Trade-offs Underlying Preferences on Social-Economic Policy
In studying policy preferences on social economic issues, research has traditionally focused on explaining variation in voters' position. Analyzed predominantly as a dichotomy between support and opposition, studies have paid less attention to the fact that in many instances, citizens hold mixed and often conflicting views about various policies, supporting some aspects of it but apprehensive about others. Learning about the sensitivities people have regarding different policy features and the trade-offs they make when evaluating a policy's merits is key to understanding where the "public stands" on a given issue. Until quite recently, scholars were ill equipped to studying such tradeoffs in a systematic manner. Most studies therefore focused either on position or saliency, examining attitudes toward different dimensions of preferences separately from the question of policy choice rather than jointly. Yet new methodological developments, particularly the growing use of conjoint designs and other embedded experimental methods provide an array of useful tools to study the sources of preferences on multidimensional policies. The contributions to this panel present studies that employ such innovative methods to study public opinion on contemporary policy debates, including pension reform, fiscal policy, austerity packages, childcare policy and support for basic income. Taken together, the studies in the Panel provide insight on both the substantive question of the determinants of voters' preferences on social economic policy, as well as lay out new ways that expand the tool-case available for researchers studying the tradeoffs voters make when assessing multidimensional policies. (Potential Presenters: Paul Marx, Yotam Margalit,…)
