Doctoral Dissertation Research Support in Political Science

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This Doctoral Dissertation Research Support project gathers and presents empirical evidence of the effect that a constitutional right to social security has on social policy making. To do so, the student first analyzes court rulings and legislative debate in five case-study countries. The five-country sample includes Germany, Italy and Sweden, which have this right, and the united States and Finland, which do not. The research compares the judicial interpretations and legal foundations of a right to social security to its status in the control countries. Legislative debate on key policy changes yields insight into the prominence of the right and judicial precedents in legislators' decisionmaking about policy structure. Using statistical analysis, a larger sample of countries is used to test whether the patterns of policy structure in Germany, Italy and Sweden hold for other nations with this right. The student travels to the Universities of Uppsala, Helsinki, and Bologna to gather data, and the purchase of a computer with which to test quantitative models. The dissertation project investigates constitutional enforcement, lends empirical evidence to legal arguments, explores the determinants of social spending, and creates a unique dataset including economic, institutional and political variables.