Abstract
The discussion on policy feedbacks is without doubt one of the most vibrant in the social sciences. Kumlin and Stadelmann-Steffen have brought together an interdisciplinary team of scholars that contributes to this thriving research agenda. The diverse contributions of this volume provide evidence of how the welfare state shapes crucial facets of the democratic public. They develop and test propositions on feedback effects in three scattered research fields: democratic participation, voting and political attitudes. This endeavour proves to be a fruitful approach, bridging the divide across disciplines and research traditions.
The 13 superb contributions are organized in three parts, each focusing on one of the research fields. The first part deals with civic engagement and democratic participation. Muñoz, Anduiza and Rico find an overall decrease of political participation during the economic crisis in Spain. However, social groups particularly affected by austerity showed a less pronounced decline and in some cases even more participation. While long-term trends are not clear, this contribution offers a convincing micro foundation for the assumed link between fiscal policy and democratic participation. The following two contributions investigate the impact of social policies on unequal voting participation. Shore provides evidence that redistributive policies equalize distribution of resources and civic skills. In this way, these policies diminish the social bias in turnouts. According to the results by Busemeyer and Goerres, the participation gap based on education is smaller in coordinated than in liberal market economies. They assume that in these societies vocational training provides higher resources, cognitive skills and social networks. Both contributions are informative and well argued but regrettably miss an explicit test of their assumptions at the individual level.
The second part of the volume focuses on voting and political preferences. Gingrich’s thought-provoking work shows that not all redistributive policies are equally visible to the individual. Preferences for equality become more important for voting decisions if redistributive effects are transparent to the individual via direct taxation. Marx and Picot investigate the effect of labour market disadvantages on voting. Only in dualized labour markets, fixed-term workers exhibit distinct party preferences from their colleagues. Albeit this work would have benefited from a broader case selection, it provides a coherent explanation for contradictory findings in the past.
The next chapters provide convincing evidence for electoral punishment. Arndt investigates feedback effects of a German labour market reform on the Social Democratic core constituency in two national elections. A large share of workers and lower white-collar employees disapprove of this reform, fostering the establishment of a new radical left party and preventing a third electoral victory for the Social Democrats. Although somehow limited in its empirical evidence, this study contributes greatly to the ongoing discussion on electoral reform consequences. In the same vein, Lindbom shows that the Swedish Social Democrats experienced severe losses in local elections when they proposed or enacted closures of emergency care centres. By applying a highly innovative natural experiment design, he provides one of the strongest pieces of this volume, calling into question previous results in this research field.
The third part of this volume focuses on performance evaluations of social policy and attitudes. Generous and well-performing social policies are assumed to foster satisfaction with the political system and increase its legitimacy. The first two chapters show that this is not an unconditional assump-tion we should make. Kumlin’s findings suggest the legitimizing effect to be weaker if costs of social policy are a salient topic in the public discourse. Dupuy and van Ingelgom demonstrate that a visible policy change, good governance and transparent accountability mechanisms generate a positive feedback that strengthened regional identity in the Flemish region. The strong point of both contributions is on the theoretical side, providing important implications for electoral accountability and political legitimacy.
The next two chapters take Wlezien’s seminal work on the thermostat model as their departing point. van Oorschot and Meuleman find a negative correlation between the generosity of unemployment benefits and the popularity of this policy. In his innovative and well-written contribution, Naumann looks at attitude responsiveness from a longitudinal perspective. Overall, the European public anticipates the demographic challenge. Resistance against an increase in the retirement age diminished over time. This effect, however, is considerably reduced when these reforms were already enacted.
The volume concludes with two Scandinavian case studies concerning performance evaluation of the welfare state. What do people know about the performance of their social security system? Surprisingly little, as Kumlin finds in a Swedish panel survey. However, citizens learn and adapt their evaluations after being confronted with TV campaign and experimentally manipulated information sheets. Larsen finds that performance evaluation is more positive among the users of social services. Unsurprisingly, the biggest supporters of increased spending can be found among the unsatisfied customers of these services.
This work advances the state of the research both in theoretical and in methodological terms. In their thought-provoking conclusion, the editors demonstrate how the diverse contributions refer to common facets of the feedback literature and ‘borrow strength’ from each other. Many chapters move beyond cross-sectional research by using natural experiments, panel data as well as survey experiments. Some contributions, however, could have benefited from a more extensive empirical analysis and robustness checks. Overall, though, this volume provides extremely useful insights for scholars interested in political behaviour and attitudes and will certainly stimulate future research.