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Who Punishes More? Partisanship, Punitive Policies, and the Puzzle of Democratic Governors
The growth of the carceral state over the last few decades has been remarkable, with millions of Americans in prison, jail, on parole or probation. Political science explanations of this phenomenon identify partisanship as a key explanatory variable in the adoption of punitive policies; by this theory, Republicans are the driving force behind growing incarceration. This article argues this explanation is incomplete and instead emphasizes the bipartisan coalition that constructed the carceral state. I argue Democratic governors are incentivized to pursue more punitive policies to compete with Republicans when those Democrats are electorally vulnerable. I test this proposition using a series of regression discontinuity designs and find causal evidence for Democrats’ complicity in the expansion of the carceral state. Democratic governors who barely win their elections outspend and outincarcerate their Republican counterparts. This article highlights Democrats’ role as key architects in the creation of vast criminal justice institutions in the states when those Democrats are electorally vulnerable.
Journal Article
Government ideology and economic policy-making in the United States—a survey
This paper describes the influence of government ideology on economic policy-making in the United States. I review studies using data for the national, state and local levels and elaborate on checks and balances, especially divided government, measurement of government ideology and empirical strategies to identify causal effects. Many studies conclude that parties do matter in the United States. Democratic presidents generate, for example, higher rates of economic growth than Republican presidents, but these studies using data for the national level do not identify causal effects. Ideology-induced policies are prevalent at the state level: Democratic governors implement somewhat more expansionary and liberal policies than Republican governors. At the local level, government ideology hardly influences economic policy-making at all. How growing political polarization and demographic change will influence the effects of government ideology on economic policy-making will be an important issue for future research.
Journal Article
Government Formation and the Radical Right: A Swedish Exception?
This article tests the claim that government cooperation between mainstream parties and radical right parties can be explained by coalition theory. It does so by analysing three Swedish cases of coalition formation where the radical right Sweden Democrats (SD) have remained excluded despite holding a pivotal position in the parliament. It argues that, with the right analytical tools, this exclusion can be explained by coalition theory: cooperation with the SD has been unattractive in terms of policy, and unnecessary because the mainstream parties have been able to form viable minority governments. This argument requires three things: first, that we consider the two-dimensional nature of Swedish politics; second, that we shift the focus from majority government to viable government; and third, that we acknowledge strategic time horizons that extend well into the future. The findings contribute to our understanding of coalition formation and of how mainstream parties respond strategically to the radical right.
Journal Article
Richard Wainwright, the Liberals and Liberal Democrats
Richard Wainwright, the Liberals and Liberal Democrats: Unfinished Business now available in paperback, offers new research on familiar themes involving loyalties of politics, faith and locality. Richard Wainwright was a Liberal MP for seventeen years during the Party’s recovery, but his life tells us about much more than this. Wainwright grew up in prosperity, but learned from voluntary work about poverty; he refused to fight in World War Two, but saw war at its cruellest; he joined the Liberal Party when most had given up on it, but gave his fortune to it; lost a by-election but caused the only Labour loss in Harold Wilson’s landslide of 1966. He then played a key role in the fall of Jeremy Thorpe, the Lib-Lab Pact and the formation of the SDP-Liberal Alliance and the Liberal Democrats; he represented a unique Yorkshire constituency which reflected his pride and hope for society; and though he gave his life to the battle to be in the Commons, he refused a seat in the Lords.Richard Wainwright's story is central to the story of the Liberal Party and sheds light on the reasons for its survival and the state of its prospects. At the same time this book is a parable of politics for anyone who wants to represent an apparently lost cause, who wants to motivate people who have been neglected, and who wants to follow their convictions at the highest level.
eBook
Between growth and security
The notion of social policy as a productive investment and a prerequisite for economic growth became a core feature in the ideology of Swedish social democracy, and a central component of the universalism of the Swedish welfare state. However as the Swedish Social Democratic Party (SAP) embarked on its Third Way in 1981, this outlook on social policy as a productive investment was replaced by the identification of social policy as a cost and a burden for growth. This book discusses the components of this ideological turnaround from Swedish social democracy’s post-war notion of a strong society, to its notion of a Third Way in the early 1980s. It is a novel and innovative contribution to the history of Swedish social democracy and recent developments in the Swedish welfare state, and it also sheds light on contemporary social policy debates. It will appeal to a wide readership from students of contemporary history and politics to policy makers and specialists.
eBook