Partisan Policy Research Articles

Towards becoming a minor intellectual: reading Edward Said alongside Deleuze and Guattari in the regime of post-truth

ABSTRACT This article assesses Edward Said’s thoughts on the role of intellectuals in the so-called regime of post-truth alongside the work of Deleuze and Guattari. I focus on Said’s caution against ‘the cult of expertise’ and ‘partisan policy intellectuals’ under neoliberal globalisation and compare his views on ‘intellectual exile’ with Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of ‘minor’. I contemplate the possibilities of living as a minor intellectual, whose critical task is not to claim a moral majority or to commandeer a political territory but to imagine alternative, deterritorialising practices. In doing so, I reconsider different forms of resistance for today.

Party ideology and care policy: The decline of institutional care since 1950

This paper studies the role of government partisanship in the transformation of two uniquely old care policy areas: the care of people with chronic and severe mental illness, and of children who cannot be cared for by their parents. While nineteenth-century ‘insane asylums’ and ‘orphanages’ have widely been understood as institutions of social control, they also served a social care function, which during the era of deinstitutionalisation was replaced by alternative forms of care. Studying mental health and child welfare policy decisions in 12 advanced capitalist countries between 1950 and 2015, I show that the types of care policies that replaced large, custodial institutions varied with government partisanship. I argue that partisan policy choices reflected parties’ core policy preferences shaped by trade-offs between their redistributive goals and individualist or familial ideals, and the lasting ideological effects of very old societal cleavages. The study contributes to theoretical debates in comparative politics about the role of partisanship in social policy making and the dimensionality of party competition over time.

Explaining interest group position-taking across partisan policy dimensions

ABSTRACT Some interest groups have policy positions on one or more policy dimensions in partisan policy space while others do not. In this paper we examine explanations for differences in interest group position-taking across policy dimensions. While group characteristics are likely to explain parts of such variation in interest group position-taking, we hypothesise that the salience and polarisation among parties and citizens of the respective policy dimension also matter. By utilising novel survey data on interest group positions (within a predefined policy space) in six different countries as well as survey data on citizen and party positions, we investigate interest group position-taking across policy dimensions. The analysis shows that interest groups with more resources, core interests linked to the examined policy dimensions and a connection to the traditional party system are more likely to have policy positions than other groups. Furthermore, we find evidence of groups supplementing citizens and parties in policy space by articulating positions on policy dimensions that the average citizen and party pays less attention to. Moreover, when party polarisation increases on a dimension, greater party salience is negatively associated with group position taking.

Political Partisanship and Economic Outcomes: Canada, 1870–2020

Abstract This paper examines the role of partisanship at the provincial and federal levels in relation to the functioning of the Canadian economy. At the provincial level (1976–2019), we find no evidence of a traditional partisan effect but do find evidence weakly consistent with a rational partisan cycle a′ la Alesina. At the federal level (1870–2020), we also find no evidence consistent with a distinctive expansion in output arising when the government is controlled by the left-leaning (Liberal) political party although we again find evidence of a weak rational partisan effect. The former result is reinforced by finding the absence of evidence of partisan changes in federal spending and/or taxation. But while the data do not support a theory of left-right partisan policy over the entire post-Confederation (1867) period of Canada’s history, the data do support distinctive periods of partisan influence on aggregate output. The first is consistent with Sir John A. MacDonald’s post-Confederation conservative government’s adoption of a policy of nation-building based on the railway, immigration, and tariffs. The second is the period between 1885 and 1933 where traditional left-right partisanship is evident and the third is the period following the Great Depression where a distinction between the outcomes arising under left- versus right-leaning parties is no longer apparent.

Jesus was a Refugee: Religious Values Framing can Increase Support for Refugees Among White Evangelical Republicans

AbstractWe consider how frames highlighting religious values shape opinion among individuals who may experience social identity conflict. White evangelical Republicans have ardently supported Donald Trump’s restrictionist stances towards refugees, yet those partisan policy stances exist in tension with evangelical Christian values emphasizing care for vulnerable strangers. Our pre-registered national experiment tests whether a religious message can move white self-identified evangelical Republicans’ opinions relating to refugees. The pro-refugee Christian values message increases favorable attitudes on some, but not all, measures. The effect is comparatively stronger among those who are more committed to their evangelical identity; unexpectedly, those who identify as strong Republicans are not more resistant to the message. These results demonstrate that moral reframing, which is known to shape attitudes in other domains, can affect self-identified evangelical Republicans’ attitudes on refugees, potentially shifting the national discussion of refugees in the U.S. The finding is all the more significant given highly partisan debates over refugees during the Trump presidency, which may have made partisans’ opinions especially rigid at the time of our experiment. Our results also speak to the relevance of identity strength in conditioning the impact of religious values frames.

Pivot: partisan policy responses to COVID-19 health disparities.

How did partisanship influence rhetoric about, public opinion of, and policies that prioritize racial and ethnic health disparities of COVID-19 during the first wave of the pandemic between March and July 2020? In this retrospective, mixed-methods analysis using national administrative and survey data, we found that the rhetoric and policy of shared sacrifice diminished and partisan differences in pandemic policy increased once it became clear to political elites that there were major racial disparities in COVID-19 cases and deaths. We trace how first disparities emerged in data and then were reported in elite, national media, discussed in Congress, and reflected in public opinion. Once racial disparities were apparent, partisan divides opened in media, public opinion, and legislative activity, with Democrats foregrounding inequality and Republicans increasingly downplaying the pandemic. This temporal dimension, focusing on how the diffusion of awareness of inequalities among elites shaped policy in the crucial months of early 2020, is the principal novel finding of our analysis. Overall, there is a clear, partisan policy response to addressing COVID-19 racial disparities across media, public opinion, subnational legislative activity, and congressional deliberations.

Politics by other means: an analysis of the discourses of Italian technocratic Prime Ministers

AbstractTechnocracy is becoming increasingly relevant in Western democracies and particularly in Italy, a country characterised by four technocratic governments in three decades. Despite the growing number of dedicated studies, there is a persistent gap in the existing literature concerning the discursive dimension of technocracy – namely, how technocrats frame the historical context, legitimise their policy agendas and, more broadly, the establishment of their governments. This study aims to fill this gap by analysing the speeches given by four Italian technocratic Prime Ministers to the parliament when asking for the vote of confidence. Methodologically, we perform first the content analysis to map the themes addressed in the speeches, their quantitative relevance and variation over time. Then, we turn to critical discourse analysis to understand the specific argumentative strategies that legitimise policy action in five key and interrelated dimensions: context, legitimation, the state, European Union and political economy. The analysis seeks to answer three research questions: What are the main discursive strategies of legitimation used by technocrats? Do they change significantly between governments and over time? Do partisan policy options and worldviews emerge clearly, or do they remain under the surface? The paper aims to contribute to the theoretical conceptualisation and empirical analysis of technocracy by highlighting the subjective, performative and overall political dimensions of the phenomenon.

The imperative of expertise: Why and how the professionalisation of policymaking transforms political parties?

This study analyses professional policy experts in political parties. While recent studies have described the characteristics of ‘unelected politicians’, the drivers for their emergence and impact on democracy have not yet been fully elaborated. We examine these aspects via Finnish party elite interviews (n=79). We challenge the traditional party professionalization narrative where parties’ increasing publicity management efforts diminish intra-party democracy (IPD) and parties’ political ambitions. We find that in addition to campaign, media, and democratic needs, political parties in Finland are concerned especially by their policymaking capacity that has shifted to experts of public administration and lobbyists, and which parties seek to strengthen with the recruitment of more political employees. This elevates the role of partisan policy professionals within political parties, a perspective that has been downplayed in party organisation literature. We call this the imperative of expertise and conclude that while it likely limits traditional IPD, it can improve representative democracy by enhancing parties’ policy control against the technocratic tendencies of contemporary democracy.

Information, partisanship, and preferences in a pandemic.

We investigate the role of information exposure in shaping attitudes and behaviors related to the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic and whether baseline political affiliation and news diet mediate effects. In December 2020, we randomly assigned 5,009 U.S. adults to nine brief text-based segments related to the dynamics of the pandemic and the safety of various behaviors, estimating the effects on 15 binary outcomes related to COVID-19 policy preferences, expected consumer behavior, and beliefs about safety. Average effects reach significance (95% CI) in 47 out of 120 models and equal 7.4 ppt. The baseline effects are large for all outcomes except beliefs. By contrast, interaction effects by political party and media diet are significant for beliefs but rarely significant for policy and behavioral attitudes. These findings suggest partisan policy and behavioral gaps are driven, at least in part, by exposure to different information and that equalizing information sources would lead to partisan convergence in beliefs.

US partisan conflict uncertainty and households' access to bank credit: Evidence from UK survey data

This paper explores how US political uncertainty, stemming from partisan conflict, affects UK households' access to bank credit. Using data from a unique UK survey database and the US news-based Partisan Conflict Index developed by Azzimonti (2018), the findings document that US partisan policy uncertainty negatively affects UK households' access to loans and credit cards. Banks' increased caution on deal selection also appears to be an underlying channel through which partisan political uncertainty can affect lending activities. Further evidence suggests that this partisan uncertainty also increases loan interest rates.

State Building in Crisis Governance: Donald Trump and COVID-19.

State Building in Crisis Governance: Donald Trump and COVID-19.

Fuelling Politicisation: The AfD and the Politics of Military Interventions in the German Parliament

ABSTRACT In 2017, for the first time in more than 60 years, a populist radical right party, the AfD, gained seats in a Bundestag election. While the AfD’s stance against immigration and European integration is well documented, its preferences towards other foreign and security policy issues are less clear. To overcome this lacuna, I investigate voting records and introduce an original dataset of the legitimising rhetoric in parliament, to grasp the AfD’s position on military interventions vis-à-vis other parties in the Bundestag. The analysis of voting patterns and rhetoric reveals the AfD as a distinct outlier within the German party system. Studying the AfD’s positioning on security issues also contributes to the emerging literature on partisan ideologies, populism and foreign policy. Together with the Left Party, military intervention policies are now contested at both ends of the political spectrum. At the same time, the AfD introduced novel discursive frames for the German context based on the party’s distinct populist radical right ideology. While the AfD has voted in favour of some smaller interventions, it regularly opposes deployments in the Middle East. Furthermore, its nationalist rhetoric breaks with Germany’s traditional ‘civilian power’ role and fuels the politicisation of foreign policy decisions in parliament.

Partisanship, Fiscal Transfers, and Social Spending in Korea: The Politics of Partial Decentralization

AbstractIn the last three decades, many Asian democracies have decentralized their political systems to promote the democratic, equal, and efficient distribution of national resources across regions. Nonetheless, most of these countries, including South Korea, are still in a stage of “partial fiscal decentralization,” in which locally elected officials have spending authority, while a significant portion of their financing relies on transfers from the central government. This article argues that the decentralized distribution is significantly influenced by the partisan interests of central and local governments. The central government transfers more funds to local governments that their co-partisans govern, and local incumbents follow partisan policy priorities to obtain the allocation of available fiscal resources. This argument is strongly supported by the empirical analysis of subsidy transfers and regional social expenditures in South Korea from 2002 to 2015. First, we find that the central government in Korea transfers larger subsidies to politically aligned regions. Second, regional governments with larger subsidy transfers have higher levels of social expenditures. Third, governors or mayors affiliated with a progressive party spend significantly more on social welfare and education than do those affiliated with a conservative party.

Loyal agent or shirking partner: understanding the policy goals of national ministers in the Council of the European Union

ABSTRACT Research on representation within the European Union (EU) often assumes that partisan policy preferences are mediated primarily through the European Parliament, while the European Council and Council of the EU (Council) represent national interests. This assumption obfuscates the potential for divergent policy preferences within Council delegations, the majority of which are coalitions comprised of ideologically diverse parties. Such divergent preferences within national governments provide an incentive for coalition partners to pursue policy outcomes at the EU level that diverge from those of their coalition. This research assesses the existence of such policy shirking by members of the Council utilizing the DEU III dataset, party manifestos, and a new dataset on the partisan characteristics of individual Council members. This analysis provides insights into the factors that affect variations between national positions (as measured by the DEU III) and coalition member preferences (as reflected in party manifestos).

Innovation Policy Learning in Iran’s Development Plans

Apart from “future-shaping” tools (such as forecasting, scenario planning, etc.), many countries also use “backward-looking” approaches to develop long-term strategies for switching to a new economic model. A retrospective assessment of accomplishments and failures (or policy learning, PL) helps learn lessons, and improve the effectiveness of innovation policy. Using the example of Iran, the paper examines the use of PL to assess key initiatives in the field of science, technology, and innovation over the past two decades. Field research allowed to identify the main policy goals, analyse their evolution and the changes in the perception of previously made decisions by politicians themselves. The active use of technical and conceptual PL indicates a relative progress in adjusting the policy vector. At the same time partisan policy learning remains common, applied to legitimise the current course, which indicates insufficient maturity of Iran’s political system (as is the case in many other developing countries). It is concluded that to make real progress and increase the effectiveness of innovation policy, technical, conceptual, and social PL should be applied, while keeping the use of partisan policy learning at the minimum.

Examining the Effect of Export Restrictions on Medical Products under WTO during Covid-19 Pandemic

Export of medical instruments in midst of life-threatening pandemic crisis has increased significantly. However, the urgent supply of medical products faces the challenge of unprecedented protectionist restrictions introduced by several developed nations. These restrictions, introduced to avoid shortage of medical products in domestic market of such exporting countries, threaten the lives and livelihood of million others in immediate and urgent need of goods. The article examines the legality and effect of these restrictions under the extant WTO framework. Lastly, the article also highlights the necessity of international cooperation between nations to overcome partisan policies of self-interest and the imporatnce of collective efforts in this fight against a common threat.

We Cannot Disagree Forever! Reality Polarization and Citizens’ Post-Pandemic Fiscal Adjustment Preferences

Recent studies have found considerable partisan polarization of both reality and policy preferences in the US. Furthermore, this polarization is so entrenched that it is immune to the provision of factual information. Has the COVID-19 pandemic, which affects citizens unequally, reproduced or disrupted these polarization patterns? To answer this question, we conducted a US-wide conjoint survey experiment with embedded information treatments. We focus on citizens’ fiscal adjustment preferences given the (anticipated) lasting fiscal COVID-19 legacy. We find that both reality perceptions regarding the pandemic and policy preferences over post-COVID-19 fiscal adjustment are polarized along familiar partisan lines, but map less well onto traditional socio- economic cleavages. However, we find that the partisan policy polarization largely disappears when citizens are exposed to information on predicted COVID-19 deaths and income losses. This de-polarizing effect is due to synchronous movement by both Democrats and Republicans, which bridges the policy gap between them. Importantly, such information has the additional re-set effect of shifting fiscal adjustment preferences towards a greater reliance on wealth and corporate taxes. We find further evidence that a US-wide consensus over a post-pandemic fiscal policy ’New Deal’ is feasible and potentially lasting.

The Effects of Information on Policy and Consumer Behavior Beliefs During a Pandemic

It is well documented that policy and behavioral responses to the SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic have become politically polarized in the United States. We test whether some of these differences may be the result of varying exposure to information using a nationally representative sample of 5,009 U.S. adults who were randomly exposed to brief text-based segments of information. The segments are all fact-based and were chosen to convey reassuring or alarming news about the pandemic and the potential safety of certain behaviors. First, we document new facts about dispersion in policy preferences, consumer behavior, media diet, and information sources by political affiliation. Second, we quantify how the provision of information affects COVID-19 policy preferences and consumer behavior. The baseline effects are large and remain so after adding extensive controls, including respondent numeracy. We also show that these results largely do not vary by political party nor the political orientation of the news diet. These findings suggest partisan policy and behavioral gaps are driven, at least in part, by exposure to different and often low-quality information.

Policy Effects, Partisanship, and Elections: How Medicaid Expansion Affected Public Opinion toward the Affordable Care Act

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) is one of the most consequential policies enacted in recent decades, but its political divisiveness and complexity call into question whether its effects can change public opinion. Using the varied implementation of one of the ACA’s key provisions—the expansion of Medicaid—and nearly 300,000 survey responses analyzed using a difference-in-differences design, we find the expansion of Medicaid makes respondents 1.5 percentage points more positive toward the ACA and 2.2 points less likely to support repealing the ACA. Effects do not vary meaningfully by partisanship, are strongest for those most likely to be directly affected, and are stronger after the 2016 election increased the chances of repeal. In addition to highlighting the ability of partisan policies to change public opinion when credibly threatened, we demonstrate how to estimate changes in model-based group opinion without bias.

Majority Party Strategy and Suspension of the Rules in the House

Most bills that pass the House of Representatives do so under suspension of the rules. Despite the procedure’s prevalence, however, we know little about its systematic use. Although the supermajoritarian threshold for passage of bills under suspension typically precludes the majority party from using these bills for partisan policy, I argue that leadership control over the procedure still allows for the pursuit of party goals. Speakers split the suspension agenda between noncontroversial but substantively important legislation and parochial bills that serve credit‐claiming goals of individual members. While the minority party is not entirely shut out of the process, I argue that Speakers have been strategic in appeasing minority party demands for inclusion. Using data on bills considered under suspension from 1973 to 2015, I demonstrate that the distribution of suspension bills systematically favors electorally vulnerable majority party incumbents, and largely excludes their minority party counterparts.