Unpopular Policies Research Articles

Policy evaluation and the causal analysis of public support.

Support for initially unpopular policies may grow over time.

Consumption Responses to an Unpopular Policy: Evidence from a Short-Lived Soda Tax

This paper provides evidence that consumers who disagree with a soda tax decrease their consumption more strongly to avoid the tax burden.

Outcome Isn’t Everything: Electoral Consequences of Implementing or Withdrawing Unpopular Policies

Incumbents often make unpopular policy decisions. But can they remedy their negative electoral consequences? We extend the wide literature concerning retrospective voting to the case of unpopular policies and examine whether voters reward a responsive withdrawal of an unpopular policy proposal or punish the disclosed policy intention despite the withdrawal. To test this, we use granular data on Swedish local election results from 2002 to 2018 and the case of widely unpopular school closure proposals, some of which were implemented and others not. We exploit within municipality variation in voting over time to causally estimate the consequences for incumbents in the neighborhood surrounding the schools. Our results confirm that even if a school remains open, voters punish the incumbent and consider the initial proposal as informative for their vote. Our findings have implications for the understanding of democratic accountability and which information voters take into account when casting their vote.

State Management of Unpopular Religious Public Policies in Israel

Abstract What strategies do state institutions use to maintain their existing unpopular policies? To what extent are citizens content with these strategies? This article presents a model classifying the various methods state institutions use to manage unpopular policies while keeping these core policies intact. The model demonstrates that state institutions manage unpopular policies by using three strategies, adjusted accordingly to counteract societal discontent: (1) disregard, (2) accommodation of under-the-legislative-threshold alternatives, and (3) partial institutional modification. To test this model, I compare three religion-based policies in Israel: marriage, public transportation on Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath), and kosher food inspection in public institutions. Each policy is an example of the different measures taken by state institutions to mitigate societal discontent without changing the core of the policy.

Against All Odds? A Discourse Network Analysis of the Political Debate About the German Passenger Car Toll Act

ABSTRACT In this article, we analyse the policy process of the German passenger Car Toll Act in Germany by means of a discourse network analysis. The Car Toll Act is particularly interesting as a ‘least-likely case’ for analysing a successful policy adoption as it was highly unpopular and faced massive criticism not only among the opposition but also among the government itself. To contribute to the understanding of the policy process behind such an unlikely policy, we analyse the reporting of two German quality newspapers, the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, by means of qualitative content analysis. Based on a total number of 329 articles, we examine the discursive structures of political demands for and rejections of the passenger Car Toll Act in the media public sphere between July 2013 and October 2014. Our findings provide novel evidence on the importance of political discourse in the process leading to the adoption of unpopular policies, indicating that the combination of institutional leverage (coalition agreement and office) and discursive persistence can lead to policy change without clear majorities.

Voter attention and electoral accountability

What sorts of policy decisions do voters pay attention to, and why? And how does rational voter attention affect the behavior of politicians in office? We extend the Canes-Wrone et al. (2001) model of electoral accountability to allow the voter to choose when to pay costly attention to learn the consequences of the incumbent’s policy. We find that the voter will pay the most attention in close races, when the instrumental value of information about incumbent performance is greatest. When the voter’s cost of attention is ‘intermediate,” she will pay different levels of attention to different policies, and generally pay more attention to an unpopular policy than a popular one. This asymmetric attention can improve accountability by giving a moderately strong incumbent an opportunity to be “caught in the act of being good” after choosing an unpopular policy. However, it can also harm accountability by leading a moderately strong incumbent to categorically avoid the unpopular policy to evade voter scrutiny. This negative effect can be sufficiently strong to harm the voter’s overall welfare, providing a novel rationale for why subsidizing information about government performance may unintentionally harm voters. Finally, we find that rational voter attention can never induce “fake leadership,” i.e., a moderately weak incumbent choosing an unpopular policy precisely because it draws more scrutiny, hoping that the voter discovers an accidental policy success.

Discourse Network Analysis: Studi Kasus pada Kebijakan Kenaikan Harga Bahan Bakar Minyak (BBM) Pertamina

Fuel oil is one of the important commodities in society and simultaneously affects various sectors. The increase in fuel prices is an unpopular policy in society, but it must still be taken by the government. Various responses and speculations emerged in the public and elite spheres, both in the form of support or rejection regarding the discourse. The purpose of this research is to find out the discourse network of the fuel price increase policy by looking at the debate map that occurs, as well as knowing the actors and concepts involved in it. The data collection technique was carried out using the Discourse Network Analysis (DNA) method using the Pertamina fuel price increase policy discourse in online media in the period August 27-September 10, 2022. The results showed that the issue debate in this discourse was dominated by a coalition of skeptics consisting of the community, student associations, think tanks, political parties and some factions in the DPR. Meanwhile, the supporting coalition is dominated by government figures, such as the President, Ministers, Members of Parliament, as well as economic and social observers.

Disgruntled cadres: How tax reduction undermines rural governance

AbstractTax reduction is supposed to garner popular support, yet rural unrest sharply increased following the Chinese government's agricultural tax reform aiming to reduce peasants' tax burden. We argue that the tax reduction could undermine village elites' economic and political incentives to assist the state in implementing unpopular policies and achieving desirable outcomes. We exploit the exogeneous timing of the agricultural tax reform that abolished the agriculture tax and estimate its impact through a rare national representative village‐level panel dataset. We demonstrate that the tax reform led to tax noncompliance and rising social unrest. We further show that local governance worsened because village elites were disincentivized from carrying out state‐preferred yet unpopular policies.

‘Depoliticised’ regulators as a source of politicisation: rationing drugs in England and France

ABSTRACT Both proponents and critics of the regulatory state thesis view the creation of non-majoritarian institutions, such as independent regulatory agencies, as a process of ‘depoliticisation’. This article problematises this assumption by proposing an analytical framework for better understanding the link between politicisation, depoliticisation, and the delegation of powers to non-majoritarian institutions, based on a study of drug rationing policies in England and France. A greater delegation of decision-making powers to a regulator enables policy decisions that are likely to prove politically costly, but such decisions are also likely to attract greater counter-mobilisation, undermining policy stability over time. By contrast, in a less delegated setting, elected politicians can prevent unpopular policy choices from being taken, which contributes to policy continuity. The article further argues that, where decision-making powers are highly delegated, the regulator’s autonomy and the visibility of losses imposed by policy decisions condition the politicisation process. These findings suggest that, far from depoliticising policy problems, delegated policymaking insulated from politics can undermine itself by becoming a source of subsequent politicisation; they thus question the prevailing notion that delegation to non-majoritarian institutions contributes to policy stability.

Winning Elections with Unpopular Policies: Valence Advantage and Single-Party Dominance in Japan

Winning Elections with Unpopular Policies: Valence Advantage and Single-Party Dominance in Japan

Boiling the Frog Slowly: Reducing Resistance to Neoliberal Education Reform Through Window Dressing Strategies

Increasingly partisan perceptions of neoliberal education reforms and resistance to such reforms from communities they negatively impact have created challenges for some neoliberal reformers. This article uses a case study of the state takeover and dramatic reshaping of the Camden, New Jersey school district to examine how some reformers have responded to those challenges. We find that Camden's state-appointed superintendents used multiple messaging and framing techniques to diffuse community resistance to unpopular policies. We refer to these techniques collectively as window dressing because they are intended to create a perception of movement away from neoliberalism without actually changing neoliberal policies. These strategies are intended to move public opinion and discourage resistance without having to fundamentally address critiques of neoliberal reform. We posit that neoliberal reformers are likely to expand their use of window dressing techniques in response to a growing rejection of neoliberal education policies, particularly by Democrats and progressives.

Daring to fail: Input‐oriented voting under supranational policy constraints

AbstractRecent literature argues that with ever‐increasing levels of supranational constraints governments have less ‘room to manoeuvre’; therefore, voters will place less weight on policy outcomes in their voting decisions. The question that remains less explored is how voters fill this accountability gap. We argue that, in this context, voters may move away from outcome‐ to input‐oriented voting. Fulfilling their promises becomes less vital for incumbents as long as they exhibit effort to overturn an unpopular policy framework. We test this argument against a survey experiment conducted in the run‐up to the September 2015 election in Greece, where we find a positive impact of the incumbent's exerted effort to challenge the status quo of austerity on vote intention for SYRIZA – the senior coalition government partner at the time – despite the failed outcome of the government's bailout negotiations.

“You Don't Know Khrushchev Well”

Abstract The ouster of Nikita Khrushchev in October 1964 was a key moment in the history of elite politics in one of the most important authoritarian regimes of the twentieth century. Yet political scientists and historians have long seemed uninterested in Khrushchev's downfall, regarding it as the largely “inevitable” result of his supposedly unpopular policies. Archival sources that have recently come to light cast serious doubt on this assessment and demonstrate new ways of measuring contingency. By showing the countermeasures Khrushchev could have taken, the importance of timing, and the sense among the plotters that their move was highly risky, this article demonstrates that Khrushchev's defeat was far from preordained. The lesson of October 1964 is not that policy differences or failures lead inexorably to political defeat, but that elite politics in Marxist-Leninist regimes is inherently ambiguous, personal, and, most importantly, highly contingent.

Political Mandate and Clarity of Responsibility: Economic Policies under Rightist Governments in Latin America

Since the mid-1990s, some rightist governments in Latin America have adhered to a strict market orientation while others have shown less attachment to doctrinaire neoliberal policies, a puzzle as rightists are expected to favor minimal government intervention in the economy. In an environment over the past two decades in which market-oriented policies, in general, have grown increasingly unpopular with many Latin Americans, we contend that rightists have less political cover to endorse neoliberal policies. Using panel data for eighteen Latin American countries from 1995 to 2015, we find that, because of the clarity of responsibility that occurs under political mandates and the unpopularity of market reforms, mandate-holding rightist governments will tend to go against their ideological preferences and decrease neoliberal policies. Our findings indicate that as presidential vote margins increase and responsibility for unpopular economic policies becomes clearer, rightist executives will be less willing to support such policies, but only to a point. The results suggest that clarity of responsibility can influence presidential decision-making concerning unpopular policies, especially microeconomic policies, but this influence diminishes as presidents become more electorally secure.

Media Attention and Strategic Timing in Politics: Evidence from U.S. Presidential Executive Orders

AbstractDo politicians tend to adopt unpopular policies when the media and the public are distracted by other events? We examine this question by analyzing the timing of executive orders signed by U.S. presidents over the past four decades. We find robust evidence that executive orders are more likely to be signed on the eve of days when the news is dominated by other important stories that can crowd out coverage of executive orders. This relationship only holds in periods of divided government when unilateral presidential actions are more likely to be criticized by Congress. The effect is driven by executive orders that are more likely to make the news and to attract negative publicity, particularly those on topics on which president and Congress disagree. Finally, the timing of executive orders appears to be related to predictable news but not unpredictable ones, which suggests it results from a deliberate and forward‐looking PR strategy.

Linking Pensions to Life Expectancy: Tackling Conceptual Uncertainty through Bayesian Model Averaging

Linking pensions to longevity developments at retirement age has been one of the most common policy responses of pension schemes to aging populations. The introduction of automatic stabilizers is primarily motivated by cost containment objectives, but there are other dimensions of welfare restructuring in the politics of pension reforms, including recalibration, rationalization, and blame avoidance for unpopular policies that involve retrenchments. This paper examines the policy designs and implications of linking entry pensions to life expectancy developments through sustainability factors or life expectancy coefficients in Finland, Portugal, and Spain. To address conceptual and specification uncertainty in policymaking, we propose and apply a Bayesian model averaging approach to stochastic mortality modeling and life expectancy computation. The results show that: (i) sustainability factors will generate substantial pension entitlement reductions in the three countries analyzed; (ii) the magnitude of the pension losses depends on the factor design; (iii) to offset pension cuts and safeguard pension adequacy, individuals will have to prolong their working lives significantly; (iv) factor designs considering cohort longevity markers would have generated higher pension cuts in countries with increasing life expectancy gap.

Wacana Poros Partai Islam untuk PILPRES 2024: Politik Identitas atau Penggalangan Suara Oposisi?

<p><em>Amidst increasing polarization of society after the 2014 and 2019 presidential elections, identity politics has been reintroduced by Islamic political parties. PKS and PPP are trying to initiate the Islamic pollitical axis for 2024 elections. The discourse about Islamic political axis springs due to the fact that incumbents cannot re-nominate as president for next election. Secondly, public trust level toward the executive has decreased due to various unpopular policies that brought about increasing critical voices toward the government. From the internal ummah, the presence of Islamic political figures who consitently won various surveys, stimulates the passion of Islamic political parties to form coalitions to win 2024 presidential election. This study uses a qualitative approach with content analysis methods toward various sources of literature; book, ebook, scientific journals, articles on conference proceedings, as well as journalistic works on the Islamic political axis discourse from identity politics theory, and theories of party coalition’s perspective that introduced by Lijphart and Rikers. The phenomenon of the coalition of Islamic political parties – once called the center axis – has succeeded in bringing KH Abdurrahman Wahid as President, defeating the candidate of the party that won the 1999 election. The similarity of identity (ideological) and interests (pragmatic) became the basis of the coalition of Islamic political parties. In addition to these two reasons, the discourse of the Islamic axis coalition in the 2024 election is also motivated by dissatisfaction with the performance and policies of the incumbent government. The regulation of the Presidential Threshold for presidential candidacy as stated by law number 7 year 2017 makes the coalition of Islamic political parties can be function as an alternative house in accomodating opposition voices. However, the elite of Islamic political parties is divided in responding to the discourse of the Islamic political axis. PKS, PPP, PKB. PBB, and Masyumi (Reborn) supports the idea of </em><em></em><em>a coalition based on political calculations and the interests of each political party. On the other hand, PAN and the Gelora Party reject the discourse which is worried to be increasing polarization in Indonesian society. The Ummat Party's skepticism is backed by the view that the existing parliamentary Islamic political parties are not serious to grasp the aspirations of the ummah and have not been able to offer alternative policies for a better Indonesia. </em></p>

Habits to save Our Habitat: Using the Psychology of Habits to Promote Sustainability

Public awareness and concern about climate and environmental issues have grown dramatically in the United States and around the world. Yet this shift in attitudes has not been accompanied by similar increases in eco-friendly behaviors. We propose that this attitude-behavior gap is partly driven by the difficulty of changing unsustainable habits. Governments and businesses can reduce this gap through interventions that draw on insights from research into the psychology of habits and behavioral economics. First, they can reduce or add friction, making it easier for people to engage in eco-friendly actions and making it harder to continue environmentally damaging practices. Second, they can set up action cues— prompts that trigger pro-environment actions—and deliver these cues where and when they will have the biggest impact. Finally, they can provide psychologically informed incentives and disincentives that steer people toward environmentally beneficial actions. We also describe how even initially unpopular policies can become accepted through habitual repetition. In these ways, habit psychology represents a promising addition to the policymaker's toolbox.

Official framing—portraying the implementation of an unpopular policy as responsive governance

ABSTRACT Official framing has received increasing attention in social movement studies. Yet current research often focuses on the negative side of framing, that is, how authorities vilify and demonize challengers to justify coercive reactions, whereas little scholarship has scrutinized positive framing, i.e., how officials recognize the legitimacy of citizens’ grievances and portray state co-optation or conciliation as responsive governance. Neither does existing research examine institutional foundations of official framings. To address these omissions, this paper devises a conceptual framework of negative and positive framings, which incorporates the examination of a variety of formal and less formal institutions undergirding different types of framing strategies. I develop this conceptual framework through a case study of how a local government framed protest against waste incineration in China. It documents how authorities portray the implementation of an unpopular policy as responsive governance and how different institutions facilitate official frames. An in-depth analysis of official framing not only contributes to the development of studies of frames and contentious politics but to a better understanding of social control and legitimation.

Dolce far niente? Non-compliance and blame avoidance in the EU

The politicisation of the EU renders blame avoidance for unpopular EU policies an essential task for governments. This article looks at one particular blame avoidance strategy, which governments have at their disposal in the EU policy process: the threat of non-compliance. In order to gauge its effectiveness, we present two competing arguments. According to the blame avoidance hypothesis, non-compliance enables governments to shift responsibility for unpopular policies to the EU, because the public lacks knowledge about EU policy-making. Conversely, the blame attraction hypothesis posits that threats of non-compliance will backfire and blame will stick with the government, because non-compliance mobilises constituents favouring compliance with EU rules. We test these hypotheses by analysing blame attributions in the news media covering the Italian government’s threat not to comply with the EU budget provisions in 2018. The findings support the blame attraction hypothesis, suggesting that domestic compliance constituents can impede governments’ blame-shifting attempts. Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1909938 .