The question if political parties matter in social policy making is traditionally answered by an analysis of social spending or replacement rates. Following this approach, parties obviously mattered in the ‘golden age', whereas their influence dwindled or even disappeared afterwards. Starting...

Does government partisanship still matter in the era of welfare retrenchment? Although a substantial number of macro-quantitative studies published over the past 15 years have addressed this question, a meta-study which presents the main insights of existing research is missing so far. Focusing...

The Swedish unemployment insurance was for a long time one of the most generous in Europe and, furthermore, marked by exceptionally low employee contributions. At the end of 2013, things looked quite different. Generosity had strongly declined, less than one-third of the unemployed were eligible...

This paper argues that a more contextualized approach is necessary to shed a brighter light on the question of party convergence in social policy making. Such a contextualized comparison not only considers different political-institutional settings, it also accounts for country-specific...

One of the most discussed topics in contemporary political science concerns the question if political parties still make a substantial difference in the neoliberal era. Focusing on direct partisan effects on policy outcomes like public and social spending, most recent studies arrive at a...