Anke Hassel, Bruno Palier (ur.): Growth and Welfare in Advanced Capitalist Economies − How Have Growth Regimes Evolved?

This extensive book is the result of longer ones research that began in 2014 and considers the main economic challenges facing advanced industrial democracies faced since the early 1990s and government responses on them. There are three clearly defined goals of the book: First, expand our understanding of how political economy has changed since the 1970s; second, to analyze the contribution of governments to these changes, looking at their growth strategies and third, to shed light on and analyze the role of reforms social policy systems in these transformations. In short, this book also shows gives a general understanding of the evolution of the regime growth in the advanced capitalist OECD countries.

Linking electoral realignment to welfare politics: an assessment of partisan effects on active labour market policy in post-industrial democracies

This article examines the political determinants of the variations in active labour market policies across advanced democracies. Specifically, it investigates the conditions under which a welfare state accommodates rather than disregards the interests of labour market outsiders. Relying on the literature on post-industrial electoral realignment, this article argues that ideological orientations not only in socio-economic but also in sociocultural dimensions dictate the policy preferences of political parties for labour market programmes. This study then hypothesizes that libertarian governments are more likely than authoritarian governments to support human capital formation of labour market outsiders. An analysis of cabinet-based periodization data of 21 advanced industrialized countries from 1985 to 2017 shows that left- and right-libertarian governments favour public spending on active labour market programmes, thereby supporting this study’s hypothesis. Furthermore, it also reveals that while left-libertarian governments increase expenditures for direct job creation schemes, right-libertarian ones do so for employment assistance and training programmes.

Voting for Populism in Europe: Globalization, Technological Change, and the Extreme Right

What are the political consequences of economic globalization? Since the 1990s, scholars of European party politics have noted the rise of extremist parties, especially right-wing populist ones, and the decline of mainstream left and right parties. This paper focuses on the association between globalization in terms of trade, capital and labor flows, technological change, and popular support for extreme right parties. I examine these relations at the regional and individual level in 15 advanced industrial democracies in Western Europe from 1990 to 2018. Globalization, especially in the form of trade, is associated with growing vote shares for extreme right parties. Technological change in the form of automation increases support for extreme right parties. The financial crisis enhanced support for populist right parties and strengthened the negative relationship between trade shocks and declining support for mainstream left parties. And the use of social welfare compensation seems unable to dampen these political trends.1

The Myth of Global Populism

The “rise of global populism” has become a primary metanarrative for the previous decade in advanced industrial democracies, but I argue that it is a deeply misleading one. Nativism—not populism—is the defining feature of both radical right parties in Western Europe and of radical right politicians like Donald Trump in the United States. The tide of “left-wing populism” in Europe receded quickly, as did its promise of returning power to the people through online voting and policy deliberation. The erosion of democracy in states like Hungary has not been the result of populism, but rather of the deliberate practice of competitive authoritarianism. Calling these disparate phenomena “populist” obscures their core features and mistakenly attaches normatively redeeming qualities to nativists and authoritarians.

The global deregulation hypothesis

The growth of the American financial services remains a bit of a puzzle. The standard approach, the deregulation hypothesis, posits that the industry expanded in response to national deregulation. Yet, when viewed in a comparative context, US finance was deregulated significantly less than other national financial systems and yet grew significantly more than most. We propose the global deregulation hypothesis as a solution to this puzzle. The hypothesis posits that American finance grew in response to deregulation in Europe and the emerging market economies. The article develops two theoretical mechanisms that link global deregulation to US financialization. It reports statistical tests that support two central implications of the global deregulation hypothesis. First, global deregulation is positively associated with the growth of US financial services, while US deregulation is not. Second, global deregulation is not systematically related to the growth of financial services in other industrial democracies.

Variegated Anti-Austerity: Exploring the Demise and Rise of Class Struggle during the Crisis of Neoliberalism

This article maps important trends that mark a new stage in neoliberal capitalism since 2008, with a focus on class struggle and resistance in the advanced industrial democracies. New forms of collective action have arisen in response to austerity which has been imposed, in different forms, across most of the advanced industrial democracies, in a context in which established solidaristic institutions – trade unions, social democratic parties, welfare states – have already been eroded as a result of the preceding twenty five years of neoliberal reform. The article presents an overview of these trends, highlighting austerity policies and anti-austerity responses. The article accounts for the rise of new forms of resistance and collective action as they have emerged differently in different national contexts, focusing on developments in the UK, US, Spain, Japan and Germany.

Teaching the Military and Revolutions: Simulating Civil–Military Relations during Mass Uprisings

ABSTRACT During revolutions, strategic interactions among civilian policy makers, armed forces, and opposition groups shape political outcomes—most important, whether a regime stands or falls. Students from advanced industrial democracies frequently find these dynamics counterintuitive, even after completing readings and engaging in traditional instruction methods. We therefore sought to improve pedagogical outcomes by designing a simulation based on scenarios similar to those witnessed during the Arab Spring and Ukraine’s Euromaidan Revolution. We divided students into four teams representing the regime, the armed forces, and two distinct groups of anti-regime dissidents. Rules were designed to incorporate the best recent scholarship on each category of actors’ behavior, such as the probability of military units defecting to protesters and the ability of riot police to repress urban uprisings. By forcing student teams to make decisions under time pressure, we obliged them to wrestle with the uncertainties and fears of betrayal inherent in complex civil–military emergencies.

How Japan Stumbled into a Pandemic Miracle

While a number of nations have used high-tech surveillance, mass testing, contact tracing, and draconian stay-at-home laws to manage the ongoing pandemic, Japan’s official response has been less energetic. The country also faces tremendous challenges with an aging population, high population density, and broad use of public transportation systems. Yet it has managed to achieve strong COVID-19 outcomes, with far lower death rates than many other advanced industrial democracies. This article traces Japan's weak response and potential explanations for its pandemic miracle, focusing especially on the role of social ties and silver linings that have emerged during the pandemic.

Poverty and Social Rights Among the Working Age Population in Post-Industrial Democracies

This article explores the determinants of relative market income poverty and poverty reduction among the working age population in 22 advanced industrial democracies. The article revisits Moller et al. (2003) but goes beyond the earlier study in four major ways. First, we are able to measure welfare state effort with social rights rather than expenditure. This allows us to separate the effect of policy from need, which jointly shape expenditure. Second, we bring the analysis up to date, covering some 10–15 more years, which allows us to compare our findings to those of the earlier study and to compare the periods before and after 2000. Specifically, we discuss the declining effectiveness of the welfare state in reducing poverty and the declining importance of partisan incumbency. Third, we pool data from three sources, the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and Eurostat Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (SILC), to almost triple the number of observations for analysis compared to past analyses. Fourth, we use newer estimation techniques that deal better with serial correlation. We show that the primary determinants of market income poverty are volume of work as a result of economic and demographic factors, as well as remuneration of work at the bottom of the income distribution driven by labor market institutions. We then show that the main determinants of poverty reduction are social rights; controlling for social rights, need variables are important for explaining poverty reduction as well.