IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/eiq/eileqs/65.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

What's left of the left? Partisanship and the political economy of labour market reform: why has the social democratic party in Germany liberalised labour markets?

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Lunz

Abstract

The German social democratic party initiated in 2003 the greatest overhaul of labour market legislation in decades, severely cutting unemployment benefits and slashing employment protection legislation. How can we explain this radical policy shift? This paper will present a counter-intuitive answer, arguing that the SPD implemented the reforms because of electoral interests. The rationale is two-fold and relates to changes in labour market policy supply and policy demand. First, the German social democrats strategically adjusted their labour market policy supply, seeking to maximise their office pay-offs by appealing to the median voter in a competitive political space. Second, the shift in policy-supply is also a reaction to changes in labour market policy-demand, with crucial segments of the electorate turning more favourably to welfare state retrenchment. This shift disproportionally benefited the conservative CDU and liberal FDP and forced the SPD to reposition itself in the party landscape.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Lunz, 2013. "What's left of the left? Partisanship and the political economy of labour market reform: why has the social democratic party in Germany liberalised labour markets?," LEQS – LSE 'Europe in Question' Discussion Paper Series 65, European Institute, LSE.
    • Handle: RePEc:eiq:eileqs:65
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.lse.ac.uk/europeanInstitute/LEQS/LEQSPaper65.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Philippe Askenazy & Catherine Bloch-London & Muriel Roger, 2004. "La réduction du temps de travail 1997-2003 : dynamique de construction des lois « Aubry » et premières évaluations," Économie et Statistique, Programme National Persée, vol. 376(1), pages 153-171.
    2. Hibbs, Douglas A., 1977. "Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 71(4), pages 1467-1487, December.
    3. Kemmerling, Achim & Bruttel, Oliver, 2005. "New politics in German labour market policy? The implications of the recent Hartz reforms for the German welfare state," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Labor Market Policy and Employment SP I 2005-101, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    4. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65, pages 135-135.
    5. Rueda, David, 2006. "Social Democracy and Active Labour-Market Policies: Insiders, Outsiders and the Politics of Employment Promotion," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 36(3), pages 385-406, July.
    6. Anders Hayden, 2006. "France’s 35-Hour Week: Attack on Business? Win-Win Reform? Or Betrayal of Disadvantaged Workers?," Politics & Society, , vol. 34(4), pages 503-542, December.
    7. James P. Allan & Lyle Scruggs, 2004. "Political Partisanship and Welfare State Reform in Advanced Industrial Societies," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 48(3), pages 496-512, July.
    8. Bruno Palier & Kathleen Thelen, 2010. "Institutionalizing Dualism: Complementarities and Change in France and Germany," Politics & Society, , vol. 38(1), pages 119-148, March.
    9. Rozenas, Arturas & Alvarez, R. Michael, 2012. "A Statistical Model for Party-Systems Analysis," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(2), pages 235-247, April.
    10. Gijs Schumacher & Barbara Vis, 2012. "Why Do Social Democrats Retrench the Welfare State? A Simulation," Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, vol. 15(3), pages 1-4.
    11. Häusermann, Silja & Picot, Georg & Geering, Dominik, 2013. "Review Article: Rethinking Party Politics and the Welfare State – Recent Advances in the Literature," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 43(1), pages 221-240, January.
    12. Baccaro, Lucio & Simoni, Marco, 2010. "Organizational determinants of wage moderation," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 33510, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    13. Pontusson, Jonas & Rueda, David & Way, Christopher R., 2002. "Comparative Political Economy of Wage Distribution: The Role of Partisanship and Labour Market Institutions," British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, vol. 32(2), pages 281-308, April.
    14. Eichhorst, Werner, 2007. "The Gradual Transformation of Continental European Labor Markets: France and Germany Compared," IZA Discussion Papers 2675, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Patrick Lunz, 2013. "What's left of the left? Partisanship and the political economy of labour market reform: why has the social democratic party in Germany liberalised labour markets?," Europe in Question Discussion Paper Series of the London School of Economics (LEQs) 5, London School of Economics / European Institute.
    2. Andrea Ceron & Luigi Curini & Fedra Negri, 2019. "Intra-party politics and interest groups: missing links in explaining government effectiveness," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 180(3), pages 407-427, September.
    3. Castater Eric Graig, 2015. "Unionization and the partisan effect on income inequality," Business and Politics, De Gruyter, vol. 17(1), pages 1-40, April.
    4. Potrafke, Niklas, 2017. "Partisan politics: The empirical evidence from OECD panel studies," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(4), pages 712-750.
    5. Birgit Pfau-Effinger & Marcel Sebastian, 2022. "Institutional persistence despite cultural change: a historical case study of the re-categorization of dogs in Germany," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 39(1), pages 473-485, March.
    6. Christian Adam & Christoph Knill & Xavier Fernandez-i-Marín, 2017. "Rule growth and government effectiveness: why it takes the capacity to learn and coordinate to constrain rule growth," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 50(2), pages 241-268, June.
    7. Persson, Torsten & Tabellini, Guido, 2002. "Political economics and public finance," Handbook of Public Economics, in: A. J. Auerbach & M. Feldstein (ed.), Handbook of Public Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 24, pages 1549-1659, Elsevier.
    8. Armèn Hakhverdian, 2009. "Capturing Government Policy on the Left–Right Scale: Evidence from the United Kingdom, 1956–2006," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 57(4), pages 720-745, December.
    9. Hibbs, Douglas A, Jr, 2000. "Bread and Peace Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 104(1-2), pages 149-180, July.
    10. Josef Brechler & Adam Geršl, 2014. "Political legislation cycle in the Czech Republic," Constitutional Political Economy, Springer, vol. 25(2), pages 137-153, June.
    11. Enriqueta Aragones, 1997. "Negativity Effect and the Emergence of Ideologies," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 9(2), pages 189-210, April.
    12. Juan Carlos Berganza, 1998. "Relationships Between Politicians and Voters Through Elections: A Review Essay," Working Papers wp1998_9809, CEMFI.
    13. Vergne, Clémence, 2009. "Democracy, elections and allocation of public expenditures in developing countries," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 63-77, March.
    14. Dilla, Diana, 2017. "Staatsverschuldung und Verschuldungsmentalität [Public Debt and Debt Mentality]," MPRA Paper 79432, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    15. William D. Nordhaus, 1989. "Alternative Approaches to the Political Business Cycle," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 20(2), pages 1-68.
    16. César Martinelli & John Duggan, 2014. "The Political Economy of Dynamic Elections: A Survey and Some New Results," Working Papers 1403, Centro de Investigacion Economica, ITAM.
    17. Kolios Bill, 2019. "Political Business Cycles in Australia Elections and Party Ideology," Journal of Time Series Econometrics, De Gruyter, vol. 11(2), pages 1-9, July.
    18. Aleksandra Praščević, 2017. "Political Economy Of Misusing Income Distribution In The Electoral Process – Biased Pluralism Approach," Economic Annals, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Belgrade, vol. 62(214), pages 7-44, June - Se.
    19. Eichhorst, Werner & Marx, Paul & Wehner, Caroline, 2017. "Labor market reforms in Europe: towards more flexicure labor markets?," Journal for Labour Market Research, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany], vol. 51(1), pages 1-3.
    20. Busemeyer, Marius R., 2011. "Varieties of cross-class coalitions in the politics of dualization: Insights from the case of vocational training in Germany," MPIfG Discussion Paper 11/13, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    labour markets; partisanship; party competition;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J48 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Particular Labor Markets - - - Particular Labor Markets; Public Policy
    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eiq:eileqs:65. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Katjana Gattermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eilseuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.