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Social democratic representation and welfare spending: a quantitative case study

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2019

Henning Finseraas
Henning Finseraas*
Affiliation:
Institute for Social Research, P.box 3233 Elisenberg, 0208Oslo, Norway
*
Corresponding author. E-mail: henning.finseraas@samfunnsforskning.no
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Abstract

The welfare state literature argues that Social Democratic party representation is of key importance for welfare state outcomes. However, few papers are able to separate the influence of parties from voter preferences, which implies that the partisan effects will be overstated. I study a natural experiment to identify a partisan effect. In 1995, the Labour Party (Ap) in the Norwegian municipality of Flå filed their candidate list too late and could not participate in the local election. Ap was the largest party in Flå in the entire post-World War period, but have not regained this position. I use the synthetic control method to study the effects on welfare spending priorities. I find small and insignificant partisan effects.

Keywords

PartisanshipWelfare spendingPolitical economySynthetic Control
Type
Research Notes
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 8 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 589 - 596
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2019

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https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/ZTXLHG
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