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Was Pierson right? A synthetic control analysis of Reagan and Thatcher’s welfare state retrenchments

Author

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  • Federico Podestà

Abstract

Pierson’s highly-regarded book, Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan, Thatcher, and the Politics of Retrenchment suffers from a serious methodological drawback. The author draws his conclusions about welfare state resilience by scrutinizing what happened to social policy structure during and at the end of the two governments selected, ending up by falling into the well-known ‘post hoc ergo propter hoc’ fallacy. The present paper sets out to replicate Pierson’s analysis in a counterfactual framework of causal inference. Adopting the synthetic control method, the trajectories of several UK and US welfare-state measures, observed in the presence of Thatcher and Reagan’s administration, were contrasted with corresponding trajectories reconstructed in the absence of neo-conservative governments. This exercise confirmed Pierson’s substantive conclusion: the neo-conservative revolution of the 1980s did not significantly alter the UK or USA welfare state.

Suggested Citation

  • Federico Podestà, 2018. "Was Pierson right? A synthetic control analysis of Reagan and Thatcher’s welfare state retrenchments," FBK-IRVAPP Working Papers 2018-02, Research Institute for the Evaluation of Public Policies (IRVAPP), Bruno Kessler Foundation.
    • Handle: RePEc:fbk:wpaper:2018-02
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Keywords

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    JEL classification:

    • C54 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric Modeling - - - Quantitative Policy Modeling
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • H53 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions

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