Party-Political Foundations of Growth Models: Party Manifestos and the Political Construction of Export-Led and Construction-Led Growth

The recent debate on growth models as a way to both model and explain capitalist diversity has reinvigorated the analysis of sectoral composition as well as the political foundations of economies. This paper takes up the distinction of export-led and construction-led growth models among OECD-countries and relates them to the dominant politics and the differing constellations of “social blocs” (Baccaro/Pontusson 2016). Export as growth strategy, for instance, is virtually unquestioned among the dominant political players in Germany: the major parties (with the exception of some radicals) on all federal levels, the Bundesbank or the economic advisory board. In Spain, by contrast, the investment into construction has been the consensus of the major political parties of the young Spanish Republic. In political party manifestos until the recent crisis both socialists and conservatives supported the focus on more construction.

To see whether the construction- or export-centeredness of an economy is associated with its policies, we draw on the Party Manifesto Project which coded the salience political parties attributed to opposing protectionism and the salience they attributed to favoring infrastructure investments in all OECD countries since 1945. We take both to operationalize to what extent parties defended (or opposed) the export-orientation of their economy or favored domestic state investments and suggest a clear association between the sectoral set-up of countries and the salience of political stances towards trade and infrastructure in countries.