Social Democratic Influence on Social Policy in the Era of Retrenchment

Comparative social policy scholars have argued that partisan effects on social policy decline or even disappear in the era of retrenchment (Pierson 1996, Huber and Stephens 2001).  Though there have been attempts to test whether partisan effects do continue to affect social policy in current period (Allan and Scruggs 2004, Korpi and Palme 2003), there have been no studies which systematically estimate how large partisan effects were in the era of retrenchment as compared to the era of expansion.  Utilizing three recently released pooled time series datasets (Brady et al. 2013, Gauthier 2011, Scruggs 2013) as well as the most recent wave of LIS data, we provide a comparison of partisan effects in the pre and post 1985 periods on six measures of social spending, five measures of replacement rates in various programs, and four measures of distributive outcomes.  In the era of expansion, we find pervasive left government effects on almost all measures and Christian democratic government effects on a more limited and predictable number of measures.  Partisan effects do decline dramatically in the era of retrenchment, but we still do find left government effects on five variables, that measure work and family reconciliation and social investment.  By contrast, we find no positive effects of Christian democratic government and negative effects on four measures.