Suchergebnisse

Cover -- Title -- Copyright -- Contents -- List of tables -- List of figures -- List of boxes -- About the author and previous editions -- Introduction and structure of the book -- 1 Becoming modern in Europe and America: different history, different politics -- 2 Political parties -- 3 "The most specific manipulative instrument of Politics": electoral systems and how votes are turned into seats -- 4 Parliaments and presidents: from legislative to executive authority -- 5 Courts -- 6 Bringing politics closer to the people: referenda and federalism -- 7 Social movements -- 8 Immigration and the welfare state -- 9 The ties that bind: political culture and the power of common forms of life -- 10 The European Union, "Brexit," and Quo vadis? -- 11 Economics, politics, and the Greek Tragedy of 2015 -- 12 Does all of this really matter - and why should we care? Explaining policy outcomes -- 13 Nationalism and ethnicity -- 14 Power sharing in deeply divided societies -- 15 Globalization and European democracies -- Index

Globalization is said to restrict severely the state's capacity to fulfill its welfare function in advanced industrial
societies. This paper tests empirically the redistributive capacity of the state operationalized as the difference in percent
of households who live below 50% of the median income in their respective country before taxes and transfers and
after taxes and transfers, based on the latest Luxembourg Income Study data. Besides globalization, specific sets of
domestic political institutions predictably and systematically affect the redistributive capacity of the state: what is
termed 'collective veto points' buoy redistribution by the state, while 'competitive veto points' have the opposite
effect. Partisan coloration is introduced as a control variable which, surprisingly, does not affect this critical function
of the welfare state. The research design is a cross-sectionally dominant panel design (N=15, t=2). This study finds
evidence that globalization and collective veto points both positively affect the redistributive capacity of the state while
the converse is true for competitive veto points.

Abstract This paper presents the first systematic, empirical examination of the impact of constitutional structures on income inequality among eighteen OECD countries. Our pooled time series/cross–sectional panel analysis (n = 18, t = 2) reveals that consensual political institutions are systematically related to lower income inequalities while the reverse is true for majoritarian political institutions. We also make a crucial distinction between 'collective' and 'competitive' veto points. Our multiple regression results provide strong evidence that collective veto points depress income inequalities while competitive veto points tend to widen the inequality of incomes. Thus, some institutional veto points have constraining effects on policy while others have 'enabling' effects.