Protest Events, Welfare Generosity, and Welfare State Regimes

Contention ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 31-50
Author(s):  
David Pritchard

This article examines data from the Cross-National Time-Series Data Archive and the Comparative Welfare Entitlements Dataset on protest events, levels of welfare generosity (the extent to which welfare protection is provided by non-market actors), and welfare state regimes in 18 advanced industrialized countries across the period 1971–2002. Using a direct measure of protest events in terms of frequency of riots, demonstrations, general strikes, political assassinations, and attempted revolutions, the article finds that there is a significant relationship between welfare generosity, welfare state regimes, and protest events. The findings demonstrate that more extensive welfare arrangements—conceptualized through the use of empirical data—not only ameliorate social disadvantages and thus legitimate market economies and capital accumulation, but also bring about stability and social order.

1996 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Boreham ◽  
Richard Hall ◽  
Martin Leet

ABSTRACTThis paper is concerned with the political determinants of the significantly different rates of welfare expenditure which characterise advanced capitalist countries. The research concentrates on the connections between the organization and mobilization of a key political actor pursing social wage benefits – the labour movement – and different levels across nations of welfare provision, including expenditure on health, social security consumption expenditure and social security transfers. The paper uses disaggregated, pooled time series data on welfare provision in 15 OECD countries, 1974–1988, to test the association between more comprehensive welfare state regimes and state structures that facilitate the intervention of organized labour movements in the policy process.


2020 ◽  
Vol 48 (7) ◽  
pp. 770-780 ◽  
Author(s):  
Iman Dadgar ◽  
Thor Norström

Background: Unemployment might affect several risk factors of cardiovascular disease (CVD), which is the leading cause of death globally. The characterisation of the relation between these two phenomena is thus of great significance from a public-health perspective. The main aim of this study was to estimate the association between the unemployment rate and mortality from CVD and from coronary heart disease (CHD). Additional aims were (a) to assess whether the associations are modified by the degree of unemployment protection; (b) to determine the impact of GDP on heart-disease mortality; and (c) to assess the impact of the Great Recession in this context. Methods: We used time-series data for 32 countries spanning the period 1960–2015. We applied two alternative modelling strategies: (a) error correction modelling, provided that the data were co-integrated; and (b) first-difference modelling in the absence of co-integration. Separate models were estimated for each of five welfare state regimes with different levels of unemployment protection. We also performed country-specific ARIMA-analyses. Results: Because the data did not prove to be co-integrated, we applied first-difference modelling. The estimated effect of unemployment and GDP on CVD as well as CHD was statistically insignificant across age and sex groups and across the various welfare state regimes. An interaction term capturing the possible excess effect of unemployment during the Great Recession was also statistically insignificant. Conclusions: Our findings, based on data from predominantly affluent countries, suggest that heart-disease mortality does not respond to economic fluctuations.


1992 ◽  
Vol 86 (2) ◽  
pp. 444-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Radcliff

While the economic voting literature is voluminous, comparatively little attention has been paid to the question of how—or whether—the economy affects turnout. I address this issue by examining national elections in 29 countries. Using time series data, the initial findings are replicated by a case study of American presidential and midterm elections since 1896. It is argued that the effect of economic adversity depends upon the degree of welfare state development. This relationship is argued to be nonlinear, so that mobilization occurs at either extreme while withdrawal obtains in the middle range. The importance to democratic theory, the study of elections, and the politics of welfare policy are discussed.


2019 ◽  
pp. 019251211988473
Author(s):  
Seung-Whan Choi ◽  
Henry Noll

In this study, we argue that ethnic inclusiveness is an important democratic norm that fosters interstate peace. When two states are socialized into the notion of ethnic tolerance, they acquire the ability to reach cooperative arrangements in time of crisis. Based on cross-national time-series data analysis covering the period 1950–2001, we illustrate how two states that are inclusive of their politically relevant ethnic groups are less likely to experience interstate disputes than states that remain exclusive. This finding was robust, regardless of sample size, intensity of the dispute, model specification, or estimation method. Therefore, we believe in the existence of ethnic peace: ethnic inclusiveness represents an unambiguous force for democratic peace.


2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (3) ◽  
pp. 346-364
Author(s):  
Petrus Olander

Abstract Recent research has provided broad accounts of what high institutional quality is; bureaucrats should be impartial and recruited on merit, public power should not be used for private gain, there should be rule of law, and property rights should be secure. Many scholars argue the reason why, in spite of this knowledge, recent institutional reforms have had limited success is that improvements are not in the interest of incumbent elites. Constraining elites is, therefore, crucial for institutional improvements. In this article, I argue that economic diversification functions as one such constraint on elite behavior, affecting their ability to form collusive coalitions. When the economy is concentrated to a few sectors, elite interests are more uniform making it easier for them to organize. However, as the economy becomes more diverse, collusion becomes harder and elites must settle for impartial institutions more often. I test the theory using cross-national time series data covering the last 25 years; the results corroborate the theory, as the economy of a country becomes more diverse, institutions become more impartial.


Author(s):  
Elizabeth R. Nugent

Are party systems in Muslim-majority societies different from those in non-Muslim-majority societies? If so, how—and more importantly, why? Cross-national time-series data demonstrate that party systems in Muslim-majority countries are consistently less competitive, less open, and less institutionalized than party systems in non-Muslim-majority countries. This chapter synthesizes existing theories of party system formation to argue that the traits of party systems in Muslim-majority countries are best explained by both shared experiences and systematic variation in historical developments related to colonialism and the path dependence of institutions, rather than by the political institutions prescribed by Islamic tenets. The chapter concludes by outlining a series of unanswered questions about the differences between party systems in Muslim-majority and non-Muslim-majority societies.


2018 ◽  
Vol 56 (1) ◽  
pp. 134-145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Gineste ◽  
Burcu Savun

While scholars have for some time debated the role of refugee flows in the international spread of conflict, most evidence has been indirect due to the scarcity of systematic data on refugee-related violence. The Political and Societal Violence By And Against Refugees (POSVAR) dataset addresses this lacuna by providing cross-national, time-series data on refugees’ involvement in acts of physical violence in their host state, either as the victims or the perpetrators of violence, individually or collectively, in all countries between 1996 and 2015. In this article, we provide an overview of the main features of the dataset, identify its limitations, and trace variation in reported levels of refugee-related violence over time and across different types of actors. We emphasize that the data may be helpful to both researchers and policymakers for more accurate understanding of the prevalence of refugee-related violence and the design of more optimal policies to mitigate it.


2021 ◽  
pp. 106939712110597
Author(s):  
Patrick S. Sawyer ◽  
Daniil M. Romanov ◽  
Maxim Slav ◽  
Andrey V. Korotayev

Demographic changes associated with the transformation from traditional to advanced economies are the basis for many of today’s theories of violent and non-violent protest formation. Both levels of urbanization and the size of the “youth bulge” have shown to be reliable measures for predicting protest events in a country. As these two processes result from modernization, it seems logical to hypothesize that the combined effect of the rise in urbanization and the increase in the youth population, urban youth bulge, would be a more relevant predictor for protests. Our tests on cross-national time-series data from 1950 to 2010 for 98 countries reveal that the combined effect of the two forces is an important predictor of anti-government protests. It may seem that the role of the urban youth bulge would appear to be an issue of the past as in more recent decades the proportion of the urban youth tends to decline in most countries of the world. However, this factor tends to be very relevant for many developing countries where both youth bulges have been growing for several decades and the general urban population is on the rise.


1974 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted Robert Gurr

Four major new compilations of macropolitical data are compared and evaluated. Each summarizes a large-scale research effort to code or to collect data suitable for theoretically relevant, cross-national comparisons. As a group the new handbooks incorporate many improvements and innovations on earlier handbooks, which concentrated mainly on cross-sectional, aggregate data or simplistically coded judgments about nation-states. About a third of their measures consist of “made” data, derived by coding journalistic and historical sources. All provide some measures for cross-time comparisons; one is devoted exclusively to time-series data. Many of their measures denote properties of internal and international conflict and of international transactions. All but one are painfully self-conscious about problems of reliability and comparability of data. One criticism is the reliance of several of the handbooks on “counts” of conflict events rather than assessment of more theoretically relevant properties of conflict. A second is the paucity of indicators of inequality and, more generally, of measures which give a “view from the bottom” of political systems.


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