Abstract
Existing comparative punishment and society literature seems to agree on a multifactorial understanding of the interrelationship of punishment and society, which draws upon e.g. features of political institutions, characteristics of welfare states, further socio-economic factors or the media. Yet, the specific role and interplay of these factors are still strongly contested (for an overview see e.g. Simon and Sparks, 2012). In putting the dynamics of partisan politics center stage, Wenzelburger’s The Partisan Politics of Law and Order offers a refreshingly new perspective on these debates. Drawing on state-of-the-art concepts of public policy analysis and party competition, Wenzelburger theorizes and empirically tests the influence of partisan politics on the evolution of law and order policies throughout the last 25 years in 20 Western democracies. While the concept of law and order may be broader than mere punishment, the book addresses at least two important gaps in comparative punishment and society research. First, The Partisan Politics of Law and Order leaves the macro-level as the traditional perspective for comparative research and zooms in to compare the specific interplay of political actors and the resulting dynamics within the institutional framework. And second, Wenzelburger’s empirical analysis is based on new data that goes beyond the aggregate indicator of imprisonment rates and includes comparative in-depth case studies of France, Germany, the UK and Sweden; thus, supplementing the manifold studies on the US.
The first two chapters develop a sophisticated and encompassing theoretical framework of partisan politics in the realm of law and order. Wenzelburger first structures existing arguments of punishment and society research according to their “causal proximity” to actual law and order policies with e.g. general socio-economic trends as being far away, relevant aspects of the institutional setting such as the electoral and party system in relative proximity and political actors, parties as well as competition dynamics center stage. Against this backdrop, Wenzelburger uses political science approaches on party competition and public policy analysis to theorize partisan politics at three critical stages of the policy process: agenda-setting, decision-making and finally policy feedback, attributing political parties a paramount role at the first two stages.
With regard to the agenda-setting stage, Wenzelburger argues that law and order issues are to be categorized as valence issues that are consensual in their ultimate goal among voters (security in the case of law and order) and induce a specific unidirectional issue competition: parties that are perceived to have the best expertise, so-called issue owners and traditionally conservative right-wing parties in the field of law and order, will put it on the political agenda while other parties will, instead of promoting alternative policies, avoid it as much as possible.
Wenzelburger identifies three more factors for competition dynamics. He assumes that the salience of law and order issues among the general public is decisive, too, as a high salience will eventually make it impossible for non-issue owners to ignore the issue. In line with existing literature, Wenzelburger furthermore argues that multi-party systems decrease outbidding dynamics because smaller parties are less inclined to compete on all issues and necessary post-election coalitions tend to deter issue owners from taking too repressive positions. Last, he expects the (non-)influence of right-wing populist parties to be an important factor as they pressure issue owners on law and order policies.
At the decision-making stage parties mainly engage in legislative activity, which is, according to Wenzelburger, primarily shaped by prior agenda-setting, the specific stance on law and order issues of the governing party (or parties respectively) and institutional constraints. With regard to important institutional barriers, Wenzelburger singles out powerful constitutional courts with a high degree of independence as particularly effective barriers.
Finally, Wenzelburger includes policy feedback effects to account for the impact of implemented policies on partisan politics and to explain long-term developments. Wenzelburger expects, mostly due to the valence character of law and order issues, ‘positive’ feedback dynamics in the field of law and order: a self-intensifying policy path despite decreased public support resulting in policy overreactions instead of an equilibrium.
The following chapters test his theoretical assumptions with the help of a skillfully arranged mixed-methods research design that relies on carefully selected and innovative data. First, Wenzelburger draws on an existing quantitative data set of coded party manifestos to verify the hypotheses about issue competition as well as two indicators for policy outputs of the decision-making stage: the ratio between public spending on law and order and the GDP as an aggregate indicator for all included democracies as well as a hand-coded set of law and order legislation of the above-mentioned four countries. Coupled with further indicators for e.g. the independence of constitutional courts, public opinion on law and order issues or violent crime rates as dependent variables, Wenzelburger conducts numerous regression analyses to test his hypotheses for all three stages. In a second step, these findings are complemented with comparative in-depth case studies of the UK’s and Germany’s social democratic governments on the one hand and Sweden’s and France’s conservative governments on the other hand during the 1990s and 2000s. Based on interviews with political elites as well as literature reviews, the case studies address the specific mechanisms at work to help explain why the governments in the UK and France legislated a comparatively substantial policy shift to the more repressive pole while their ideological counterparts in Germany and Sweden only made relatively moderate policy changes.
Wenzelburger thus provides a nuanced picture of the complex dynamics of law and order politics, going beyond mere verification of hypotheses. As far as the agenda-setting stage is concerned, Wenzelburger shows that the quantitative and qualitative data both support the notion of a unidirectional issue competition that is indeed highly influenced by the salience of law and order issues as well as by strong right-wing political parties and the resulting pressure on issue owners. With regard to the party system and the institutional setting, the findings are more nuanced. While the quantitative analyses do not provide robust evidence for a link between characteristics of the party system or the institutional setting as a whole, the case studies offer evidence for some constraints. Wenzelburger is for instance able to show that in spite of a high salience and fierce competition pressure the German Social Democrats were indeed relatively restrained because of compatibility concerns with their coalition partner, the Green party, in the German multi-party system. Moreover, this case reveals the significant influence of the strong German constitutional court that not only directly struck down legislation but was regularly evoked as a powerful authoritative argument by political actors. The case studies furthermore reveal that the role of governments and possible institutional constraints, e.g. second parliamentary chambers, at the decision-making stage mainly depend on the actual beliefs and ideologies of the political actors. Regarding possible policy feedback, Wenzelburger’s quantitative analyses show positive feedback dynamics with a continued toughening of legislation in spite of a decreased issue salience in all four countries, but less so in the cases of Sweden and Germany. Two important feedback mechanisms are identified in the case studies: the acquired knowledge of political parties that law and order issues pay off in electoral gains and, second, increased resources for victims’ organizations.
Wenzelburger concludes with three possible future scenarios that range from policy overreactions due to intensified and continued pressure from right-wing populist parties to a fundamentally changed issue competition dynamic because of an increased influence of liberal (left-wing) parties that challenge the valence character of law and order issues with alternative policy proposals.
The Partisan Politics of Law and Order is an insightful and stimulating read for punishment and society scholars from all disciplines. Introducing analytical concepts of public policy analysis and research on party competition is in itself a major contribution that illuminates the dynamics within the polity and thereby helps to fill the vacuum between the institutional setting and actual policies. Yet, this perspective comes with natural pitfalls: the clear-cut categories and concepts, the search for causal mechanisms as well as much of the quantitative data run the risk of being somewhat simplistic and artificial. However, Wenzelburger successfully avoids that danger in three ways: first, he uses an impressively refined and encompassing theoretical framework and examines strategically-acting political parties, second, in including policy feedback Wenzelburger incorporates the impact of prior political debates and decisions and overcomes the simple concept of a “given” public opinion and last, he is admirably transparent in discussing the limitations as well as the strengths of his theoretical and methodological approach.
The Partisan Politics of Law and Order is therefore a much-needed and stimulating addition to existing comparative punishment and society research. Its valuable analytical concepts as well as empirical findings shed new light on important puzzles of punishment and society research offering novel insights for a more refined understanding. In turn, it points to further avenues for future research.
