Law and Order Policies and Conservative Parties

Chapter 5 presents evidence on how two conservative governments, the Bildt government in Sweden in the early 1990s and the French UMP governments at the beginning of the 2000s, embarked on rather different policy paths although both governments had pledged to implement harsher law and order policies. The difference between the two countries is explained by the fact that the Swedish political system constrains radical policy shifts by a legislative process that is lengthy and aimed at consensus. Therefore, the government simply did not have enough time to implement what might have been a major policy change. Second, the importance of law and order policies was greatly reduced in Sweden due to a major financial and economic crisis that hit the country only months after the government took office—hence, crime and security were not a priority. In France, in contrast, institutional constraints were weak, which explains the shift toward a harsher stance.

Introduction

Chapter 1 gives an overview of the politics of law and order and presents the research design for the volume. Based on a discussion of the state of the art, it argues why it is crucial to analyze party politics to fully understand why some countries moved law and order policies toward the more repressive poles while others didn’t follow the same path.

Law and Order and the Risk of Policy Overreaction

Chapter 6 shows how an initial turn toward a harsher policy stance on law and order can set in motion positive policy feedback and lead to policy overreaction. It discusses the mechanisms that may lead to such overreaction building on Pierson’s framework. From the empirical evidence gathered, it seems plausible that especially the valence character of security-related issues, which make them issues on which elections can be won, creates a dynamic leading to policy feedback. However, this depends on the extent of the initial policy change: whereas overreaction can be diagnosed in the United Kingdom and France, the cases of Germany and Sweden show that positive feedback is not necessarily the case.

Law and Order Policies and Third Way Social Democrats

Chapter 4 provides a comparative case study on the law and order policies adopted by two social democratic governments, the British Blair administration and the German Red-Green government led by Chancellor Schröder. It reveals that while both governments started from a somewhat similar programmatic stance, only the British case saw a significant turn toward tougher policies. The divergence between the cases is explained by two main facts. First, the German SPD seemed to use a tough policy stance mainly for strategic reasons, whereas the leaders of New Labour were deeply convinced of the policy. Therefore, the German policy stance was much less coherent. Second, the power of the German constitutional court strengthened the position of the Ministry of Justice vis -à-vis the Ministry of the Interior—a fact that hindered a tougher path.

Patterns of Law and Order Policies in 20 Western Industrialized Countries

Chapter 3 provides a quantitative analysis of the politics of law and order. It is presented in three steps. First, it is tested whether party competition affects how much parties emphasize law and order issues in their programs and whether this is different for issue owners. The study reveals that high public salience of security-related issues pushes all parties to emphasize law and order more strongly and that issue owners react strongly to the pressure of right-wing populist parties by emphasizing law and order in their manifestos. Second, the quantitative analysis tests whether these different programmatic stances translate into more spending on law and order. This is indeed the case, but only if constitutional courts are weak. Third, the analysis takes a closer look at legislation in France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom and finds the main results of the analysis on public spending corroborated.

A Theoretical Framework of the Partisan Politics of Law and Order

Chapter 2 develops a theoretical framework for the analysis of law and order policies from a partisan politics perspective. It argues that understanding law and order policy making involves two main steps that can be conceptually distinguished: agenda-setting and decision-making. For the agenda-setting phase, the chapter builds on the assumption that issues related to law and order are valence-loaden and generate issue competition between political parties. Therefore, issue owners are particularly likely to get tough on law and order. For decision-making, the theoretical argument relates to theories of comparative public policy analysis, according to which the preferences do translate into public policies, but only if the institutional context allows. Finally, this theoretical chapter discusses how law and order turns may shape the future policy path through positive policy feedback. All expectations are summarized in seven hypotheses to guide the empirical analysis.

The Partisan Politics of Law and Order: Past, Present and Future

Chapter 7 summarizes the main findings of the book and links them to the existing literature. It emphasizes the importance of putting political parties center stage when analyzing law and order policies. The chapter concludes by discussing three scenarios on how law and order policies may develop given the recent changes in political systems in Western democracies.