The Impact of Electoral Vulnerability on Policy Recalibration: Pensions, Agricultural and Citizenship Reforms

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International and domestic developments, both economic and ideational,create challenges for contemporary democracies, such as adapting their welfare states, recalibrating their agricultural policies, and reacting to the phenomenon of growing numbers of immigrants. Such policy recalibration poses a distinct problem for democracy, because recalibration entails a reallocation of resources and recognition from established interests and influential voters to newly mobilizing voters and interests. Thus, we have reason to believe that electoral pressure and political competition might affect the ability of governments to recalibrate public policies. Fear of voter retribution might lead to blame avoidance, and thus to avoidance of the problem of adapting pension systems so as to make them more fiscally-sustainable. Similarly, the vulnerability of politicians to nativist voters might impede efforts to change citizenship laws in light of increasing migration. In the agricultural area, as well, angry farmers might threaten electorally-vulnerable politicians and thus block efforts to reduce trade-distorting and ecologically-counterproductive agricultural subsidies.The purpose of this project is two-fold. First we wish to explain the variance in legislative responses to these challenges across nations, across time, and across policy areas. Second, we wish to develop a robust measure of the electoral vulnerability of politicians that incorporates both features of political institutions and political competition so as to be able to include the factor of electoral vulnerability in analyses of the political determinants of public policies. This project builds upon a data set based on a previous DFG Project, which includes the political characteristics of 186 governments in 16 West European nations from 1980-2005, as well an index of pension reform efforts of these governments. Now we propose to update and improve this data set, and to expand it to new policy areas in order to assess the political determinants of policy recalibration in three areas that vary with respect to the degree of interest intermediation: pensions, agriculture and citizenship.