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The essential argument of this paper is that, despite the work of many pioneering scholars, the original agenda of those who came to comparative public policy with a view to demonstrating that the functioning of democratic politics makes a difference remains substantially unfulfilled. The substance of that agenda was to show that choices made through the ballot box influenced not only what governments did, but also had implications for important aspects of the lives of the citizens making those choices. One important reason for this failure was that much of the emergent quantitative literature came to focus on differences in government outputs as proxies for whether such differences translated into a diversity of real outcomes. In effect, the literature tried to settle the question of whether politics matters by showing how politics shapes what governments do without asking the no less important question: does government matter? This paper seeks to model a diverse range of outcomes with a view to assessing the impact of both political and government spending and taxing variables. On the basis of that assessment, I argue that the challenge for the next generation of political science informed comparative policy research is to go beyond an examination of the link between political choice and the outputs of government to ask questions about - and ideally to begin to map - the linkages between the things governments do and the lives their citizens experience. ; Das zentrale Argument dieses Papiers lautet, dass die ursprüngliche Agenda der vergleichenden Staatstätigkeitsforschung, wonach politische Faktoren Unterschiede in der Staatstätigkeit bedingen, im Wesentlichen unerfüllt blieb. Kern dieser Agenda war es zu zeigen, dass Wahlentscheidungen nicht nur Staatstätigkeit beeinflussen, sondern auch Auswirkungen auf wichtige Lebensbereiche der Bürger haben, die diese Entscheidung treffen. Ein wichtiger Grund für ihr Scheitern war, dass ein Großteil der quantitativen Literatur Unterschiede in den Outputs als Proxy für unterschiedliche Outcomes in den Blick nahm. Tatsächlich versuchte die Literatur die Frage zu beantworten, ob Politik einen Unterschied macht, indem man zeigte, wie Politik Staatstätigkeit beeinflusst, ohne sich die nicht weniger wichtige Frage zu stellen, ob Staatstätigkeit einen Unterschied macht. Dieses Papier untersucht die Bestimmungsfaktoren einer Reihe unterschiedlicher Outcomeindikatoren. Dabei wird der Einfluss sowohl von politischen Variablen als auch von staatlichen Ausgaben- und Steuerindikatoren untersucht. Auf Basis dieser Untersuchung wird argumentiert, dass die nächste Generation der vergleichenden Policyforschung den Fokus auf Outputindikatoren überwinden und stattdessen die Auswirkungen von Staatstätigkeit auf die Lebenswirklichkeit der Bürger in das Zentrum der Analyse rücken sollte.

This paper suggests that differences in reIigious adherence and/or in degrees of secularization as between advanced nations may be as relevant to understanding cross-national variance in a wide range of public policy outcomes as are the impacts of socioeconomic and political factors. The prima facie evidence for such a thesis is demonstrated in areas as diverse as welfare expenditure, family policy and labour market policy outcomes, and is shown to have a particuIar saIience wherever gender-related outcomes are at issue. On the basis of this evidence, it is suggested that, in policy outcome terms at least, it is possible to identify a distinctive Catholic family of nations consisting of a grouping of core Western European and Southern European countries.

This article addresses the question of how unexpected national and international emergencies — the 'black swans' of war, economic depression, hyperinflation and, more prospectively and topically, terrorist incidents and environmental catastrophes — affect the character of welfare state interventions and welfare state development. We do have clear evidence of such effects in the past: hyperinflation in Germany made that country particularly inflation averse; the Great Depression was a stimulus to welfare state development in countries such as Sweden and New Zealand; and the Second World War was a key factor in the subsequent development of the post-war British welfare state. However, the impact of emergencies is, at best, a very minor theme of welfare state analysis and one largely left to historians of the welfare state, suggesting that such effects are no longer considered to be a major factor shaping welfare state development and that welfare states are like 'elephants on the move', rarely significantly thrown off course by particular events. The article speculates on why that might be, noting the importance of the timing of the emergency, its type, size, and the extent and character of prior welfare provisions. The article concludes by examining the implications of this analysis for our understanding of the likely impact of possible future emergencies of a terrorist or environmental character and of the proper political response to such emergencies.

This Working Paper has two principal objectives. The first is to describe the main trajectories of development of public expenditure aggregates in OECD countries during the period 1960-2001. The second is to provide a more detailed analysis of expenditure trends in these countries in the period since 1980, with a view to establishing the extent and sources of expenditure retrenchment in this latter period. The aggregates examined include total outlays of general government, total social expenditure and the core spending of general government, including expenditures on defence, public order, education, general public services, economic affairs, community services and environmental protection. The headline stories of the general survey of expenditure trajectories include the massive overall expansion of public spending, the declining importance of military expenditures and the increased salience of spending on social policy objectives and, most recently, a shift within the latter category from cash benefit spending to spending on service provision. Significant findings of the analysis of trends include the pronounced convergence of aggregate expenditure levels, the role of slow economic growth in promoting the measured growth of public expenditure and the continuing importance of the partisan complexion of government in shaping spending patterns. The analysis also suggests that post-1980 retrenchment tendencies were restricted to core spending, were only marginally influenced by developments in the global economy and were driven almost entirely by a conjuncture of high levels of public indebtedness and high real interest rates which is unlikely to be repeated in the near future.