Christoffer Green-Pedersen

The Growing Importance of Issue Competition: The Changing Nature of Party Competition in Western Europe

Changes in Western European political parties in general have attracted considerable scholarly interest, whereas changes in party competition have been almost overlooked in an otherwise extensive literature. Using the party manifesto data set, this article documents that party competition in Western Europe is increasingly characterised by issue competition, i.e. competition for the content of the party political agenda. What should be the most salient issues for voters: unemployment, the environment, refugees and immigrants, law and order, the welfare state or foreign policy? This change is crucial because it raises a question about the factors determining the outcome of issue competition. Is it the structure of party competition itself or more unpredictable factors, such as media attention, focusing events or skilful political communication? The two answers to this question have very different implications for the understanding of the role of political parties in todays Western European democracies.

If you can't Beat them, Join them? Explaining Social Democratic Responses to the Challenge from the Populist Radical Right in Western Europe

Over the last three decades many Western European social democratic parties have been challenged by populist radical right parties. The growth and success of parties on the right flank of the party system represents a triple challenge to the social democrats: they increase the salience of issues traditionally ‘owned’ by the right; they appeal to working-class voters who traditionally support the centre left; and they may facilitate the formation of centre-right governments. This article explores social democratic parties’ strategic options in the face of this challenge, and tests the widespread assumption that the centre-left parties respond by taking a tougher stance on issues related to immigration and integration. Comparative analysis of developments in Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Norway reveals significant variation in the substance, scope and pace of the strategic responses of their social democratic parties. And it suggests that those responses are influenced not only by the far right but also by the reactions of mainstream centre-right parties and by parties on their left (and liberal) flank. Internal disunity, potential or actual, is also an important factor.

Comparative studies of policy agendas

Abstract Studying agenda-setting and policy dynamics is a well-established research tradition dating back to the work of Bachrach and Baratz and Schattschneider. The research tradition provides considerable insights into how changes in agendas and political attention affect public policy. However, the research tradition has been strongly dominated by studies of the US and has suffered from a lack of comparative studies. This paper discusses the different ways in which such comparative studies can be conducted as well as the potential insights which may be gained from them.

The Dependent Variable Problem within the Study of Welfare State Retrenchment: Defining the Problem and Looking for Solutions

Since the publication of Piersons seminal work, a scholarly debate about welfare state retrenchment has emerged. One of the debated issues has been the “dependent variable problem”: what is welfare state retrenchment and how can it be measured. In particular the pros and cons of different types of data have been discussed. The argument of this article is that the “dependent variable problem” is a problem of theoretical conceptualization rather than a problem of data. It is crucial to be aware that different theoretical perspectives on retrenchment should lead to different conceptualizations of retrenchment. Furthermore, different conceptualizations lead to different evaluations of the same changes in welfare schemes, just as the question of which data to use depends very much on the theoretical conceptualization of retrenchment.

New Public Management Reforms of the Danish and Swedish Welfare States: The Role of Different Social Democratic Responses

This article investigates market-type reforms of the service welfare states in Sweden and Denmark. Sweden has implemented such reforms to a greater extent than Denmark. The explanation should be found in the different responses of the Social Democratic parties to the NPM agenda in general and market-type reforms in particular. In Denmark, the Social Democrats have opposed market-type reforms, whereas in Sweden they have been more open towards these ideas. With this focus, the paper differs from most other writings about variation in the extent of NPM.

The Political Conditionality of Mass Media Influence: When Do Parties Follow Mass Media Attention?

Claims regarding the power of the mass media in contemporary politics are much more frequent than research actually analysing the influence of mass media on politics. Building upon the notion of issue ownership, this article argues that the capacity of the mass media to influence the respective agendas of political parties is conditioned upon the interests of the political parties. Media attention to an issue generates attention from political parties when the issue is one that political parties have an interest in politicizing in the first place. The argument of the article is supported in a time-series study of mass media influence on the opposition parties’ agenda in Denmark over a twenty-year period.

A Giant Fast Asleep? Party Incentives and the Politicisation of European Integration

Hooghe and Marks recently introduced a new research agenda for the study of European integration focusing on politicisation, that is, the inclusion of mass public attitudes in the politics of European integration. The overall aim of this article is to respond to this new research agenda. Unlike the existing literature, which focuses on Euro-sceptical extreme left or right-wing parties, the article argues that the explanation for politicisation or the lack of it should be found in the incentives the issue offers for mainstream political parties. Denmark serves as a crucial case study to show the limitations of the existing literature and the need to focus on the incentives of mainstream political parties. Empirically, the article argues that expectations about the impending politicisation of European integration are misplaced. The giant is fast asleep because those who could wake it up generally have no incentive to do so and those who have an incentive cannot.

How agenda-setting attributes shape politics: Basic dilemmas, problem attention and health politics developments in Denmark and the US

Abstract We propose a new approach to the study of comparative public policy that examines how the agenda-setting attributes of an issue combine with problems to drive political attention. Whereas existing comparative policy studies tend to focus on how institutional or programmatic differences affect policy and politics, we begin by asking how the issue itself affects politics across nations. We illustrate by comparing health care attention and policy developments in Denmark and the US over fifty years. These two industrialized democracies have very different political and health care systems. Nevertheless, similar trends in political attention to health emerge. We argue that these high levels of attention reflect the issues political attractiveness with regard to vote-seeking and the fact that neither system has managed to resolve the basic dilemma of how to control costs while meeting public expectations concerning access to services and health care quality.

Effects of the Core Functions of Government on the Diversity of Executive Agendas

The distribution of attention across issues is of fundamental importance to the political agenda and outputs of government. This article presents an issue-based theory of the diversity of governing agendas where the core functions of government—defense, international affairs, the economy, government operations, and the rule of law—are prioritized ahead of all other issues. It undertakes comparative analysis of issue diversity of the executive agenda of several European countries and the United States over the postwar period. The results offer strong evidence of the limiting effect of core issues—the economy, government operations, defense, and international affairs—on agenda diversity. This suggests not only that some issues receive more attention than others but also that some issues are attended to only at times when the agenda is more diverse. When core functions of government are high on the agenda, executives pursue a less diverse agenda—focusing the majority of their attention on fewer issues. Some issues are more equal than others in executive agenda setting.

Review Essay: The new politics and scholarship of the welfare state:

The development of the advanced welfare states has long been an issue attracting enormous scholarly attention within both political science and sociology. For a long time, the welfare state literature was about explaining the growth of modern welfare states in general as well as variation across OECD countries.1 However, since the publication of Pierson’s seminal work (1994; 1996), the welfare state debate has increasingly shifted towards the question of welfare state retrenchment. Numerous journal articles and books about welfare state retrenchment have been published, and we believe that this literature is now so extensive that a review is warranted. Pierson argues that the politics of retrenchment is qualitatively different from the politics of expansion. We claim that the scholarship about retrenchment is also markedly different from the scholarship about the expansion of the welfare state. The expansion literature was dominated by economic and sociological approaches focusing on the societal forces shaping the growth of the welfare state (van Kersbergen, forthcoming). Following van Kersbergen, we argue that the retrenchment literature is dominated by political science approaches. We claim that this is partly visible in the factors highlighted in investigations of retrenchment at the level of welfare states and partly in the attention paid to differences across policy sectors. This review has four sections. First, there is a brief outline of Pierson’s main argument. Then we turn to the main part of the review; the post-Pierson debate. Here we will first look at the factors suggested as explanations for retrenchment at the level of welfare states, and subsequently we turn to the factors suggested to explain retrenchment in relation to specific policy sectors focusing on pensions and health policy. We finish with some suggestions for a further research agenda.2