Election Campaigns and Welfare State Change: Democratic Linkage and Leadership Under Pressure - Hardcover

by Staffan Kumlin (Author), Achim Goerres (Author)

For over three decades, mature European welfare states have been on their way into an austerity phase marked by greater needs and more insecure revenues. A number of reform pressures-including population ageing, unemployment, economic globalization, and increased migration-call into question the economic sustainability and normative underpinnings of transfer systems and public services. And while welfare states long seemed resilient to growing challenges, it now seems clear that they are changing. Election Campaigns and Welfare State Change examines how political leaders and the public respond to reform pressures at a pivotal moment in a mass democracy: the election campaign. Do campaigns facilitate debate and attention to welfare state challenges? Do political parties present citizens with distinct choices as to how challenges might be met? Do leaders prepare citizens for the idea that some solutions may be painful? Do their messages have adaptive consequences for how the public
perceives the need for reform? Do citizens adjust their normative support for welfare policies in the process? The answers to these questions affect how we understand welfare state change and representative democracy in an era of mounting challenges.

Author Biography

Staffan Kumlin, Professor of Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Achim Goerres, Professor of Empirical Political Science, Department of Political Science, University of Duisburg-Essen