Jane Gingrich

The decline of the working-class vote, the reconfiguration of the welfare support coalition and consequences for the welfare state

The central political claim of Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism is that class actors, through the instruments of the democratic process, can modify capitalism. Where working-class mobilization is strong, left parties have sufficient electoral support in the political arena to alter markets politically in ways that decommodify and thereby empower workers. The decline of traditional class voting, however, has profoundly changed this dynamic of welfare politics. We show that the political support coalition for welfare states has been reconfigured through two processes. On the one hand, the Left may have lost support among the traditional working class, but it has substituted this decline by attracting substantial electoral support among specific parts of the expanding middle class. On the other hand, the welfare support coalition has been stabilized through increasing support for the welfare state among right-wing political parties. We discuss the possible consequences of this ‘middle-class shift’ in the welfare support coalition in terms of policy consequences.

Preferences in Context Micro Preferences, Macro Contexts, and the Demand for Social Policy

Political economists have increasingly looked to understand social welfare policy as a product of individual-level demand for social spending. This work hypothesizes that individuals with riskier jobs demand more social spending and that large welfare states emerge where there are more of such individuals. In this article we build on the “policy feedback” literature to argue that existing welfare institutions condition how individual-level factors affect social policy preferences. Specifically, we argue that institutions directly altering the risk of unemployment (employment protection legislation) and those that delink benefits from the labor market create a more uniform system of social risk that reduces the importance of individual-level risk in shaping policy preferences. We test these propositions using multilevel analysis of 19 advanced industrial countries in 2006. We find that individual risk matters for social policy preferences only where employment protection is low and welfare benefits are dependent on employment.

Visibility, Values, and Voters: The Informational Role of the Welfare State

How do citizens’ preferences over social policy shape their vote choice? In this article, I argue that the relationship between individuals’ values and voting behavior is powerfully conditioned by the informational structure of the welfare state. More visible welfare states provide citizens with greater information on social policy, allowing them to more easily connect these preferences to the political process. Where visibility is low, voters place less importance on social-policy issues in voting. I test this claim against data from 55 elections from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the 1996 and 2006 International Social Survey Program. I find compelling evidence that where welfare-state visibility is high, voters attach more weight to spatial distance from parties in voting, are more likely to see welfare related issues as important, are better able to place parties on a left-right spectrum, and have more consistent policy preferences.

Privatizing Participation? The Impact of Private Welfare Provision on Democratic Accountability

For many citizens, public services are the most direct and tangible output of the democratic process, and yet in the past thirty years policymakers have privatized a broad swath of these services. This article asks whether privatization of state services changes citizens’ willingness to use the ballot box to hold governments to account for service performance. It argues that citizens can hold governments to account for privatization, but only if they have genuine political alternatives. Where quality falls with privatization and citizens can vote for an anti-privatization party, what we call a clear signal, privatization can mobilize citizens to sanction incumbents. By contrast, where quality falls but there are few anti-privatization alternatives, a mixed signal, privatization reduces sanctioning behavior. To test this theory, the article draws on a panel difference-in-differences analysis of disability reform from the United Kingdom, leveraging a geographically varied introduction of private provision across two political contexts.