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

国际和国内的发展，无论是经济上还是思想上，都给当代民主国家带来了挑战，比如调整他们的福利国家，重新调整他们的农业政策，以及对越来越多的移民现象做出反应。这种政策的重新调整给民主带来了一个明显的问题，因为重新调整需要重新分配资源，从既定利益集团和有影响力的选民到新动员起来的选民和利益集团的认可。因此，我们有理由相信选举压力和政治竞争可能会影响政府重新调整公共政策的能力。对选民报复的恐惧可能会导致逃避责任，从而避免调整养老金制度以使其更具财政可持续性的问题。同样，政客们对本土主义选民的脆弱性可能会阻碍根据移民增加而改变公民法的努力。在农业领域也是如此，愤怒的农民可能会威胁到选举中脆弱的政治家，从而阻碍减少扭曲贸易和适得其反的农业补贴的努力。这个项目的目的是双重的。首先，我们希望解释不同国家、不同时间和不同政策领域对这些挑战的立法反应的差异。其次，我们希望开发一种强有力的措施来衡量政治家的选举脆弱性，该措施将政治制度和政治竞争的特征结合起来，以便能够在分析公共政策的政治决定因素时包括选举脆弱性的因素。本项目建立在先前DFG项目的数据基础上，该数据集包括16个西欧国家186个政府1980-2005年的政治特征，以及这些政府养老金改革努力的指数。现在，我们建议更新和改进这一数据集，并将其扩展到新的政策领域，以便在养老金、农业和公民身份这三个因利益中介程度不同而不同的领域评估政策重新校准的政治决定因素。

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.