Left-right party ideology and government policies: A meta-analysis

This paper summarizes how the partisan influence literature assesses the relation- ship between the left-right party composition of government and policy outputs through a meta-analysis of 693 parameter estimates of the party-policy relationship published in 43 empirical studies. Based on a simplified 'combined tests' meta-analytic technique, we show that the average correlation between the party composition of government and policy outputs is not significantly different from zero. A mutivariate logistic regression analysis examines how support for partisan theory is affected by a subset of mediating factors that can be applied to all the estimates under review. The analysis demonstrates that there are clearly identifiable conditions under which the probability of support for partisan theory can be substantially increased. We conclude that further research is needed on institutional and socio-economic determinants of public policy.

[1]  Richard L. Clayton,et al.  Welfare-State Retrenchment Revisited: Entitlement Cuts, Public Sector Restructuring, and Inegalitarian Trends in Advanced Capitalist Societies , 1998, World Politics.

[2]  J. Williamson,et al.  Welfare Spending in Advanced Industrial Democracies, 1950-1980 , 1988, American Journal of Sociology.

[3]  C. Boix.  Privatizing the Public Business Sector in the Eighties: Economic Performance, Partisan Responses and Divided Governments , 1997, British Journal of Political Science.

[4]  Gwenn W. Gröndal,et al.  Meta-analytic procedures for social research , 1993 .

[5]  L. Hedges,et al.  Vote-counting methods in research synthesis. , 1980 .

[6]  J. Laponce.  Left and Right: The Topography of Political Perceptions , 1981 .

[7]  J. C. Thomas.  Policy Convergence Among Political Parties and Societies in Developed Nations: A Synthesis and Partial Testing of two Theories , 1980 .

[8]  Jacob Cohen.  Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences , 1969, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Research Design.

[9]  Duane H. Swank.  The Political Economy of Government Domestic Expenditure in the Affluent Democracies, 1960-80 , 1988 .

[10]  Edward R. Tufte,et al.  Political Control of the Economy , 1978 .

[11]  John E. Hunter,et al.  Methods of Meta-Analysis , 1989 .

[12]  J. Sturm,et al.  Political and economic determinants of OECD budget deficits and government expenditures: A reinvestigation , 1997 .

[13]  Richard I. Hofferbert,et al.  Parties, Policies, And Democracy , 1994 .

[14]  A. Hicks,et al.  Welfare expansion revisited: policy routines and their mediation by party, class and crisis, 1957–1982 , 1989 .

[15]  R. Rosenthal.  Meta-analysis: Concepts, corollaries and controversies. , 1998 .

[16]  R. Friedland,et al.  Private and social wage expansion in the advanced market economies , 1986 .

[17]  A. Blais,et al.  Do Parties Make a Difference? A Reappraisal , 1996 .

[18]  F. Castles.  The Impact of parties : politics and policies in democratic capitalist states , 1982 .

[19]  Tor Midtbø.  The impact of parties, economic growth, and public sector expansion: A comparison of long-term dynamics in the Scandinavian and Anglo-American democracies , 1999 .

[20]  G. Esping‐Andersen,et al.  The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism , 1990 .

[21]  K. Kersbergen.  Social Capitalism: A Study of Christian Democracy and the Welfare State , 1995 .

[22]  Duane H. Swank.  Funding the Welfare State: Globalization and the Taxation of Business in Advanced Market Economies , 1998 .

[23]  B. Peters,et al.  European politics reconsidered , 1991 .

[24]  G. Sartori.  Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis , 1977 .

[25]  A. Downs.  An Economic Theory of Democracy , 1957 .

[26]  D. Hibbs.  Partisan theory after fifteen years , 1992 .

[27]  I. Budge,et al.  Ideology, strategy and party change : spatial analyses of post-war election programmes in 19 democracies , 1987 .

[28]  Eric C. Browne,et al.  Aspects of Coalition Payoffs in European Parliamentary Democracies , 1973, American Political Science Review.

[29]  A. Blais.  The Political Economy of Public Subsidies , 1986 .

[30]  Simon Hug,et al.  Parties and party systems : a bibliographic guide to the literature on parties and party systems in Europe since 1945 on CD-ROM , 1998 .

[31]  Michael Laver,et al.  Coalitions and Cabinet Government , 1990, American Political Science Review.

[32]  F. Castles,et al.  DOES POLITICS MATTER: AN ANALYSIS OF THE PUBLIC WELFARE COMMITMENT IN ADVANCED DEMOCRATIC STATES , 1979 .

[33]  J. Thérien,et al.  Political Parties and Foreign Aid , 2000, American Political Science Review.

[34]  G. Glass,et al.  Meta-analysis in social research , 1981 .

[35]  大森 弥.  Harold L.Wilensky;The ′New Corporatism′,Centralization,and the Welfare State(A Sage Proffesional Paper in Contemporary Political Sociology),1976 , 1979 .

[36]  R. Skinner.  Technological Determinism: A Critique of Convergence Theory , 1976, Comparative Studies in Society and History.

[37]  M. Lewis-Beck.  Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies , 1988 .

[38]  A. Blais,et al.  Do Parties Make a Difference? Parties and the Size of Government in Liberal Democracies* , 1993 .

[39]  P. Solano.  Institutional Explanations of Public Expenditures among High Income Democracies , 1983 .

[40]  F. Carlsen.  Counterfiscal policies and partisan politics: evidence from industrialized countries , 1997 .

[41]  F. Castles,et al.  Public Welfare Provision, Scandinavia, and the Sheer Futility of the Sociological Approach to Politics , 1979, British Journal of Political Science.

[42]  Louis Imbeau.  ‘End of ideology’ or ‘politics matters’? Two competing hypotheses in the comparative public policy literature , 1994 .

[43]  P. Pennings.  The impact of parties and unions on welfare statism , 1995 .

[44]  Douglas A. Hibbs,et al.  Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy , 1977, American Political Science Review.

[45]  R. D. Mckinlay.  Accumulation, Aggregation and Eclecticism in Political Science: A Case Study of Foreign Policy Analysis , 1996 .

[46]  J. Banks,et al.  Stable Governments and the Allocation of Policy Portfolios , 1990, American Political Science Review.

[47]  Michael Laver,et al.  Cabinet Ministers and Parliamentary Government , 1994 .

[48]  Thomas R. Cusack,et al.  Political‐economic aspects of public employment , 1989 .

[49]  David R. Cameron,et al.  The Expansion of the Public Economy: A Comparative Analysis , 1978, American Political Science Review.

[50]  R. Light,et al.  Accumulating Evidence: Procedures for Resolving Contradictions among Different Research Studies. , 1971 .

[51]  Manfred G . Schmidt.  When parties matter: A review of the possibilities and limits of partisan influence on public policy , 1996 .