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Stagnating incomes have been a widespread concern in advanced democracies over the past decades. However, despite a turn towards dynamic frameworks, the consequences of stagnation on political support for the welfare state are still unclear. This study introduces the distinction between 'absolute' and 'relative' income stagnation - that is, experiencing stagnating incomes over time (without reference to other groups) and in relative comparison to other groups - and explores how they shape citizens' attitudes towards redistribution. I argue that absolute and relative stagnation have opposite effects on redistributive preferences. Contrary to political economy theories, I expect that low absolute income growth reduces demand for redistribution, because it reduces voters' ability and willingness to afford welfare state policies. Support for this hypothesis is provided in an empirical analysis that combines novel estimates for absolute and relative income stagnation with longitudinal survey data on redistribution preferences in 14 advanced democracies between 1985 and 2018. The distinction between absolute and relative experiences has broader implications for comparative politics research and might contribute to explain why income stagnation and rising inequality have not led to higher political demand for redistributive welfare policy.

AbstractStagnating incomes have been a widespread concern in advanced democracies over the past decades. However, despite a turn towards dynamic frameworks, the consequences of stagnation on political support for the welfare state are still unclear. This study introduces the distinction between 'absolute' and 'relative' income stagnation – that is, experiencing stagnating incomes over time (without reference to other groups) and in relative comparison to other groups – and explores how they shape citizens' attitudes towards redistribution. I argue that absolute and relative stagnation have opposite effects on redistributive preferences. Contrary to political economy theories, I expect that low absolute income growth reduces demand for redistribution, because it reduces voters' ability and willingness to afford welfare state policies. Support for this hypothesis is provided in an empirical analysis that combines novel estimates for absolute and relative income stagnation with longitudinal survey data on redistribution preferences in 14 advanced democracies between 1985 and 2018. The distinction between absolute and relative experiences has broader implications for comparative politics research and might contribute to explain why income stagnation and rising inequality have not led to higher political demand for redistributive welfare policy.

Abstract
The COVID-19 pandemic has revived discussions about universal basic income (UBI) as a potential crisis response. Yet despite favorable circumstances, little actual policy change in this area was observed. This article seeks to explain this absence of policy change and to reflect on the prospects for introducing UBI schemes after the pandemic in European democracies. I argue that public opinion on UBI provides few electoral incentives to push for social policy change. Using prepandemic data from 21 European democracies and pandemic data from the UK, I show that political support for UBI has been divided between different groups who advocate conflicting policy goals and who hold divergent views about existing welfare state arrangements. While support for UBI might have increased during the pandemic, the underlying political dividing lines are likely to have remained intact. Due to these enduring divisions and the stable support for existing social policy arrangements over an untested policy, the prospects for introducing UBI schemes in the post-pandemic world remain uncertain.

The unequal distribution of economic gains is a prominent factor behind policy preferences and recent electoral outcomes, but often fails to explain trends in preferences over time. This study introduces the distinction between "absolute" and "relative" economic experiences and explore how they shape preferences for redistribution. I argue that absolute and relative experiences have offsetting effects on redistribution preferences. Contrary to political economy theories, I expect that lower absolute income growth reduces demand for redistribution, because only favourable absolute economic contexts that are widely shared create the willingness to finance costly redistributive policies. Support for this expectation is provided in an empirical analysis that combines novel estimates for absolute and relative income growth with longitudinal survey data on redistribution preferences in 20 advanced democracies between 1985 and 2019. The distinction between absolute and relative economic experiences carries broader implications for research in political economy and comparative politics.

What are the consequences of the trend towards more flexibilized temporary employment for income inequality? This paper reassesses the crucial assumption behind the politics of dualization that reforms targeted at outsiders do not undermine the position of labor market insiders. Instead, I argue that deregulated temporary employment exacerbates risk asymmetries among regular workers. Facing high replacement risks and prospective wage losses in temporary employment, deregulation creates wage pressure on middle-income employees. Using Luxembourg Income Study microdata for 22 OECD countries from 1985 to 2014, I show that income shares of the middle and lower-middle quintiles decline under deregulated temporary employment. The findings suggest that flexibilization "at the margins" contributes to rising inequality beyond dualization by causing major distributional shifts among regular workers. This further challenges the view of stable insider coalitions, pointing instead to an opposition potential against flexible employment around middle-class insiders.

AbstractDo coalition governments really suffer from short time horizons in fiscal policymaking, as posited by standard political-economy models? This article focusses on coalitions that have created high levels of familiarity through shared governing experiences in the past and that are likely to cooperate again in future governing coalitions. I argue that such coalitions have incentives to internalise the future costs of debt accumulation and reach credible agreements to balance their constituencies' fiscal preferences. Moreover, sustaining broad coalitions should have electoral advantages to implementing controversial economic reforms, thus resulting in lower debt increases compared not only with less durable coalitions but also with single-party governments. Comparing 36 economically advanced democracies between (up to) 1962 and 2013, I estimate the effects of coalitions' cooperation prospects on the dynamics of public debt. The findings indicate that long time horizons can help coalitions to overcome intertemporal coordination problems and to reach specific policy goals.

Over the past decades, many Western democracies have deregulated flexible employment. At the same time, income inequality has increased. This dissertation explores the association between these two trends. It focuses on two types of wage-related risks that regular workers are exposed to: low-wage competition and adverse income prospects. I argue that flexibilization spreads risk disproportionally towards workers in the middle of the earnings distribution. These workers then face pressure to defend their wage levels against low-wage competition from the cheaper alternative of temporary workers. They also frequently lack the mobile, high-skilled profiles conducive to secure career advancement and long-term wage growth in flexible work environments. This argument departs from several influential accounts in the literature. First, it disputes a core premise of the dualization literature: that "insiders" employed in secure jobs are insulated against adverse labor market changes. Because labor market policies "at the margins" have repercussions on insiders, it is important to consider the heterogeneity of wage prospects among workers in regular employment. Second, the policy changes towards flexible employment provide an explanation of the widespread rise of inequality in coordinated market economies in Europe. Third, it introduces a new aspect to the debate about the "declining middle class": the focus on wage-related risks. These risk types encompass developments such as long-term wage stagnation, which arguably are crucial to understanding contemporary electoral shifts. Wage-related risks are mostly omitted from theories on the welfare state that focus exclusively on employment-related risks. Comparing 25 OECD countries between 1985 and 2015, I find that flexible employment policies affect earnings inequality among regular workers as well as subjective perceptions of labor market risks. The macro-level analysis based on LIS data shows that flexibilization is associated with earnings losses for middle-income workers, while it has neutral effects on low-wage earners and positive effects on top earners. The micro-level analysis based on ISSP data shows that flexibilization increases middle-income workers' levels of subjective job insecurity relative to low-income workers. In deregulated contexts, risk spreads towards middle-income workers. Finally, the in-depth analysis of the crucial case of Germany, where major flexibilization reforms took place, reveals that flexibilization results in long-term wage stagnation for middle-income workers. This dissertation provides multi-faceted data on the position of workers in the middle of the earnings distribution over the past three decades. Aside from "objective" developments of earnings inequality, it provides detailed data on workers' subjective perception of economic risks. The findings contribute to understanding the various consequences of flexible employment for income inequality. The trajectories of pivotal middle-class voters suggest that political support for flexible employment is built up on shaky ground.

AbstractIn recent years, scholars have observed that political parties' policy positions frequently fit the preferences of well‐to‐do voters better than those of the less well‐to‐do; a phenomenon known as policy congruence inequality. While the existence of inequality in policy congruence is well‐established, we currently only have a modest understanding of the causes of it. We develop an argument proposing that the political mobilisation of citizens with low socioeconomic status (SES) both in the parliamentary channel, in the form of high turnout, and in the extra‐parliamentary channel, in the form of high union density, is pivotal. Both high turnout and union density force parties to pay more attention to the preferences of the disadvantaged, thereby creating lower policy congruence inequality. To test the argument, we have collected and harmonised election surveys and party manifestos covering 90 elections in Australia, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, covering several decades until today, yielding more than 120,000 voter–party dyads. Employing this new dataset, our results confirm that the political mobilisation of citizens with low SES is a strong predictor of policy congruence inequality. This finding nuances the conclusion of extant research by showing that low‐SES citizens are not always on the losing side politically. It also implies the important role of maintaining or maybe even increasing turnout and union membership among the disadvantaged in society. Places where either turnout or union density is slipping in these years are likely to witness further increases in policy congruence inequality in the years to come.

An emerging consensus claims that 'subjective' (mis)perceptions of income inequality better explain redistributive preferences than actual 'objective' conditions. In this article, we critically re-assess this view. We compare perceived and actual income positions as predictors for preferences for redistribution. We argue that perceived income is partly endogenous to actual income and its effect on preferences conditional on ideology. Using an original survey experiment from Switzerland, we show that the predictive power of perceived income is lower compared to actual income. Perceived income is only associated with redistribution preferences among centre-right respondents, but not among left-wing respondents. Furthermore, providing respondents with corrective information about their true position in the income hierarchy has no effect on redistribution preferences. These findings go against the new consensus about the superior explanatory power of subjective perceptions of income inequality. We argue instead that absolute objective conditions should be at the centre of explaining redistributive preferences.

How can we explain variation in demand for redistribution among cross-pressured voters? We argue that redistributive preferences reflect an interaction between material self-interest and political ideology. The self-interest argument predicts growing opposition to redistribution as income increases, while the argument of ideologically driven preferences suggests that left-leaning citizens are more supportive of redistribution than right-leaning citizens. Focusing on cross-pressured voters, we expect that the difference in redistribution preferences between left- and right-leaning citizens is smaller at the bottom of the income hierarchy than at the top. Among the group of left-leaning citizens, the role of material self-interest is expected to be smaller than among right-leaning citizens. We provide evidence in line with our argument analysing data from the European Social Survey in 25 European democracies between 2008 and 2018.

Abstract
What explains the large cross-country variation in the wage premium for higher education? Economic analyses of wage differentials by education point to technological change and globalization, but we know little about the impact of different types of public policies. We argue that public education spending and tax-transfer policies contain the spread of 'education premiums' through material incentives (decommodification) and attitudinal responses, i.e. changing attitudes towards education premiums and the motivation to request a maximum return on individual investment in education. The empirical analysis relies on a new dataset of education premiums constructed from Luxembourg Income Study surveys, covering 22 OECD countries between 1989 and 2014. We provide evidence that taxation levels and public education spending particularly affect education premium levels and changes within countries. For the literature on income inequality, these findings imply the need to pay attention more systematically to redistributive policies shaping the 'market' distribution of incomes.