Klaus Armingeon

Democracy in crisis? The declining support for national democracy in European countries, 2007-2011

The Great Recession that started in 2007/2008 has been the worst economic downturn since the crisis of the 1930s in Europe. It led to a major sovereign debt crisis, which is arguably the biggest challenge for the European Union (EU) and its common currency. Not since the 1950s have advanced democracies experienced such a dramatic external imposition of austerity and structural reform policies through inter- or supranational organisations such as the EU and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or as implicitly requested by international financial markets. Did this massive interference with the room for maneuver of parliaments and governments in many countries erode support for national democracy in the crisis since 2007? Did citizens realise that their national democratic institutions were no longer able to effectively decide on major economic and social policies, on economic and welfare state institutions? And did they react by concluding that this constrained democracy no longer merited further support? These are the questions guiding this article, which compares 26 EU countries in 2007�2011 and re-analyses 78 national surveys. Aggregate data from these surveys is analysed in a time-series cross-section design to examine changes in democratic support at the country level. The hypotheses also are tested at the individual level by estimating a series of cross-classified multilevel logistic regression models. Support for national democracy � operationalised as satisfaction with the way democracy works and as trust in parliament � declined dramatically during the crisis. This was caused both by international organisations and markets interfering with national democratic procedures and by the deteriorating situation of the national economy as perceived by individual citizens.

The OECD and European welfare states

Are the policies for welfare in European states coherent and do member states follow them rigorously and in line with the recommendations of the OECD? These fourteen country studies consider how well, and how far, OECD recommendations on welfare are observed in member states.

The loss of trust in the European Union during the great recession since 2007: The role of heuristics from the national political system

How can we explain the decline in support for the European Union (EU) and the idea of European integration after the onset of the great recession in the fall of 2007? Did the economic crisis and the austerity policies that the EU imposed—in tandem with the IMF—on several member countries help cause this drop? While there is some evidence for this direct effect of EU policies, we find that the most significant determinant of trust and support for the EU remains the level of trust in national governments. Based on cue theory and using concepts of diffuse and specific support, we find that support for the EU is derived from evaluations of national politics and policy, which Europeans know far better than the remote political system of the EU. This effect, however, is somewhat muted for those sophisticated Europeans that are more knowledgeable about the EU and are able to form opinions about it independently of the national contexts in which they live. We also find that the recent economic crisis has led to a discernible increase in the number of those who are disillusioned with politics both at the national and the supranational level. We analyze 133 national surveys from 27 EU countries by estimating a series of cross-classified multilevel logistic regression models.

The effects of negotiation democracy: A comparative analysis

Abstract. To what extent are variations in public attitudes and outcomes of social/economic policies caused by institutions like consociational democracy, corporatism and regimes of veto players? In dealing with this question, this paper starts from a critical review of Arend Lijpharts argument in Patterns of Democracy that consensus democracies are better, kinder and gentler democracies. I agree that consociational democracy, corporatism, and regimes with veto players have different effects on attitudes and policy outcomes – even after controlling for effects of political power distribution, as well as domestic and international contexts of policymaking. However, consociational democracy is not a ‘better, gentler and kinder’ democracy, though neither is it worse than majoritarian democracy in governing societies. Corporatism is efficient in reducing unemployment and inflation, and in expanding public receipts and the reach of the welfare state. Finally, regimes of veto players constrain expansion of public receipts. This analysis is based on data covering 22 OECD countries, 1971–1996.

Conditional Punishment : a comparative analysis of the electoral consequences of welfare state retrenchment in OECD Nations, 1980-2003

Do incumbent parties that retrench the welfare state lose votes during the next election? That is the guiding question for our paper. We analyse elections and social policy reforms in 18 established OECD democracies from 1980 to 2003. We show that there is no strong and systematic punishment for governments which cut back welfare state entitlements. The likelihood of losing votes is the same for governments that retrench the welfare state as for those that do not. Rather, electoral punishment is conditional on whether governments have the chance to stretch retrenchment over a longer period of time, and whether social policy cuts are made an issue in the electoral campaign. If other political parties and the mass media do not put the theme on the agenda of the campaign, and if the retrenchment can be carried out in small steps during a longer governmental term, governments may considerably reduce welfare state effort without fear of major electoral consequences.

Active labour market policy, international organizations and domestic politics

ABSTRACT The paper deals with active labour market policies (ALMP) in 22 established democracies of the OECD country group, in the period from 1985 to 2002. It seeks to explain variations in policy effort. The focus is on international impacts on domestic policy developments. Since the mid-1990s, both the OECD and the EU have been strong proponents of activation measures. I argue that the impact of these international organizations is conditional on the fit of the proposed policies with path-dependent national policies and politics. The OECD may succeed in developing efficient policy proposals, but it fails at the level of implementation. EU recommendations covary with increased effort in ALMP, but it fails to develop efficient policies.

Swiss Worlds of Welfare

Are there different worlds of welfare in Swiss cantons, analogous to different national welfare state regimes? Are the welfare regimes made up of functionally related sub-regimes in the field of employment, education, taxation and social security, as argued in recent analyses of ‘varieties of capitalism’? And can the variations between such cantonal welfare regimes be explained by the same politico-institutional variables that account for the development of national welfare states? These are the guiding questions of this article. We find strong empirical evidence for large inter-cantonal variation in welfare state policies. The sub-regimes are not functionally connected, however. Their variation is related to different sets of variables, indicating a weak functional link between them. Developments and causal structures are specific to the various subregimes. In addition, it is socio-economic and not politicoinstitutional variables that have had the strongest imprint on the overall structure of cantonal welfare regimes.

Swiss corporatism in comparative perspective

Compared with the trajectories of corporatism in other Western European countries, Swiss social partnership is remarkably stable. How can this be explained? In this article Swiss corporatism is hypothesised to share many of the important facilitating and sustaining circumstances, institutions and traditions of European corporatism. On the other hand, it is different with regard to the major challenges facing corporatist interest intermediation. These challenges are still missing, to a large extent, in Switzerland.

Social Inequality in Political Participation: The Dark Sides of Individualisation

Has the participatory gap between social groups widened over the past decades? And if so, how can it be explained? Based on a re-analysis of 94 electoral surveys in eight Western European countries between 1956 and 2009, this article shows that the difference in national election turnout between the half of the population with the lowest level of education and the half with the highest has increased. It shows that individualisation – the decline of social integration and social control – is a major cause of this trend. In their electoral choices, citizens with fewer resources – in terms of education – rely more heavily on cues and social control of the social groups to which they belong. Once the ties to these groups loosen, these cues and mobilising norms are no longer as strong as they once were, resulting in an increasing abstention of the lower classes on Election Day. In contrast, citizens with abundant resources rely much less on cues and social control, and the process of individualisation impacts on their participatory behaviour to a much lesser extent. The article demonstrates this effect based on a re-analysis of five cumulative waves of the European Social Survey.

Choosing the path of austerity: how parties and policy coalitions influence welfare state retrenchment in periods of fiscal consolidation

Abstract What are the conditions under which some austerity programmes rely on substantial cuts to social spending? More specifically, do the partisan complexion and the type of government condition the extent to which austerity policies imply welfare state retrenchment? This article demonstrates that large budget consolidations tend to be associated with welfare state retrenchment. The findings support a partisan and a politico-institutionalist argument: (i) in periods of fiscal consolidation, welfare state retrenchment tends to be more pronounced under left-wing governments; (ii) since welfare state retrenchment is electorally and politically risky, it also tends to be more pronounced when pursued by a broad pro-reform coalition government. Therefore, the article shows that during budget consolidations implemented by left-wing broad coalition governments, welfare state retrenchment is greatest. Using long-run multipliers from autoregressive distributed lag models on 17 OECD countries during the 1982–2009 period, substantial support is found for these expectations.