Suchergebnisse

Zusammenfassung
Während die Parteidifferenzthese in den 1980er Jahren noch heftig umstritten war, setzte sich in den 1990er jähren ein Konsens durch, welcher eine Bestätigung der These nahe legte. In den letzten jähren begannen aber neue theoretische und empirische Herausforderungen, diesen Konsens in Frage zu stellen. Der vorliegende Artikel untersucht im Anschluss an diese Debatte den Beitrag der Parteidifferenzthese zur Erklärung der Entwicklung der Staatsausgaben im Zeitraum 1980 bis 2000. Die Parteidifferenzthese kann dabei in einer "bedingten" Form bestätigt werden. Regierungspartizipation von Links- und Mitteparteien führt zu höheren Staats- und Sozialausgaben, wenn sich die Regierungen bereits seit einigen jähren im Amt befinden. Die institutionellen Beschränkungen der Zentralmacht beeinflussen hingegen die Effektivität der Regierungen entgegen der weit verbreiteten Meinung nicht.

AbstractElectoral engineering strategies in majoritarian electoral systems, in particular the possibility to contain insurgent parties by manipulating electoral districts for partisan gain, are key determinants of parties' positions on the adoption of proportional representation (PR). Providing both qualitative and quantitative evidence, this paper demonstrates that partisan districting can be an effective strategy to protect incumbent parties' dominant political positions. In addition, it shows how insurgent parties push for the adoption of PR to end the practice of partisan districting. Finally, it demonstrates that incumbents – in the face of increasing electoral threats – cling to the existing majoritarian system if partisan districting allows them to influence vote-seat distortions in their favor. Together, these findings suggest that the possibility to contain insurgent parties by means of partisan districting is an important but overlooked alternative to the adoption of PR. Moreover, by demonstrating that vote-seat distortions moderate the relationship between district-level electoral threats and legislators' support for PR adoption, this paper offers an important corrective to Stein Rokkan's influential electoral threat thesis.

Do ethnic majorities and minorities have diverging preferences for fiscal capacity? Do these preferences converge during national emergencies such as interstate war? In this paper, we provide evidence from a natural experiment to demonstrate that politically salient minority-majority divisions undermine the development of fiscal capacity. In addition, we show that the pressure of interstate war is insufficient to supersede differences in support for the expansion of state's capacity for taxation between majority and minority groups. More specifically, we employ a regression discontinuity design using a natural border that separates linguistic groups and municipality outcomes of a popular vote on the introduction of direct taxation at federal level in Switzerland during the First World War. The findings suggest that salient minority-majority divisions have a negative effect on the expansion of states' capacity for taxation even during periods of interstate war.

AbstractThe First World War was a watershed moment for the development of the modern tax state. Yet, whereas the tax yield strongly increased in this period, little is known about how the tax mix changed, in particular regarding the turn to direct taxation. Examining the two 'Sister Republics' Switzerland and the USA, this paper demonstrates that tax reforms in this critical period for modern tax systems were conditioned by coalitions among producer groups, which had already come into existence before the war. Most notably, farmers and their position on international trade were important in shaping coalitions on the turn to direct taxation. The Great War's main role was to temporarily interrupt (Switzerland) or cement (USA) the tax system's reorientation. The paper thus shows that war‐induced tax reforms have a lasting impact on the tax mix only if powerful coalitions support these reforms independently of the war effort.

Dual vocational education and training (VET) with social partner involvement in its governance can typically be found in collective skill formation systems. This article reviews the diversity of collective skill formation systems with a particular focus on their systemic governance. In particular, we look at the actors involved as well as how the systemic governance is organised in terms of corporatist decision-making bodies. The article shows that there are important cross-national differences. First, the social partners do not always participate in the decision-making at the political-strategic level. Second, social partner involvement is not always on equal terms (parity), with trade unions in some cases being less strongly involved. Third, differences in VET governance are particularly pronounced at the technical-operational level. Empirically, the article focuses on the five prototypical collective skill formation systems Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Switzerland.