Abstract
In many European countries established leftwing and rightwing parties have been threatened by policy convergence and, in turn, new populist parties that offer more polarized platforms. I investigate whether government ideology influences dragnet-controls - controls of persons conducted by the police without having any suspicion that the controlled person committed a crime. They took effect after the Schengen Agreement in 1995. I propose dragnet-controls to be a prime example of ideology-induced policies implemented by established parties. Dragnet- controls confine citizens’ liberties, but may help to detect criminals. Using data from the 16 German states over the period 1995-2017, I show that rightwing governments have been active in implementing dragnet-controls and leftwing governments have denied dragnet-controls since the mid 1990s. When evaluating how government/party ideology influences individual policies, previous econometric studies ignored initiatives in parliament. My study also considers initiatives in parliament. I conjecture that, since 2015, the rightwing CDU has used initiatives to introduce/extend dragnet-controls to also deal with the upcoming threat of rightwing populism. Future research should examine policy-differences between the established parties regarding more fine-grained policy measures also in other European countries.
Highlights
The Euro crisis starting in 2008 and, in particular, the refugee crisis starting in 2015 have threatened the established political parties in many European countries
Hesse In Hesse, the new rightwing Christian Democratic Union (CDU)/Free Democratic Party (FDP) government led by Roland Koch introduced dragnet controls in 2000.16 The CDU in Hesse has a reputation for being highly conservative and in favour of law-and-order issues – the change in government from a leftwing SPD/Green to a rightwing CDU/FDP government and the introduction of dragnet-controls was a prime example of ideology-induced policies
The growth rate in the unemployment rate is expected to be negatively correlated with leftwing government ideology and positively with the introduction of dragnet controls
Summary
Extension Abolition Limitation Law for introduction (rejected) Law for introduction (pending) Law for extension (rejected). Note: The table shows how many times (a) rightwing state governments introduced, extended, abolished and limited dragnetcontrols and (b) the CDU initiated a law to introduce or extend dragnet-controls which that were rejected by leftwing governments or a still pending over the period 1995–2017. State governments were active in introducing/extending dragnet-controls and rejecting initiatives from 1995 to 2007 (Table 1). State governments did not change any dragnet-control policies and opposition parties did not make any attempts to change the law over the period 2008–2014. The growth rate in the unemployment rate is expected to be negatively correlated with leftwing government ideology (core hypothesis of the partisan theories) and positively with the introduction of dragnet controls (in an attempt to preempt low-skilled immigrants who might compete about jobs with low-skilled native citizens). I include fixed time and fixed state effects and estimate the fixed-effects model with standard errors robust to heteroskedasticity (Huber/White/sandwich standard errors – see Huber 1967; White 1980)
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