Summary:

In the policy-making process, Business has various means to influence policy, and because of its resources and its importance for the economy, it has a distinct advantage compared to other interest groups. Nevertheless, Business does not always win policy debates. This project looks at the sources of the structural power of Business and its limits. It analyzes how much policymakers – in particular city mayors – privilege the concerns of Business over other policy goals. And it analyzes important policy instances – such as the establishment of deposit-insurance schemes – in which consumer interests won out over the interests of Business.

Contributors:

• Stefanie Walter

Sources of Funding:

• Universität Zürich (position pursuing an academic career)

Collaborating Institutions:

• Raphael Reinke, Chair of International Relations and Political Economy, Department of Political Science, University of Zurich

Collaborating Countries:

• Switzerland

Contacts:

External:

Dr. Raphael Reinke (UZH)

Keywords:

• political economy
• Banking
• interest groups

Summary:

International trade and its distributional consequences have been portrayed both as causes of greater political stability as well as a disruptive forces fueling widespread discontent and social unrest. At the heart of this controversy is the question of who wins and loses from international trade and how people react to these distributional changes. Especially in the context of developing and emerging countries we know little about individual level effects of trade openness. Adding to that, it is scarcely taken into account how people perceive of these objective distributional consequences. When are individuals satisfied or frustrated with their welfare development and how, if so, do they react to these changes? The project aims to contribute to these pending issues by clearly identifying winners and losers based onnew new trade theory. I argue, based on new trade models, that objective economic consequences are unevenly distributed depending on a combination of individual skill-level and exposure to international competition. These distributive consequences drive wedges within formerly cohesive, same-skilled groups. Building on these distributional effects I specify how individuals subjectively assess their welfare and set out the conditions that induce economic grievances. The mechanism at the heart of the breeding process of grievances is the evaluation of economic welfare based on comparison to similar others. As within-group wage disparity increases, a rising number of individuals are systematically frustrated with the result of their welfare evaluation. Thus, trade can also influence the satisfaction of non-exposed individuals by impacting the income of relevant comparison units. In general, economic grievances induce political discontent, as blame for this adverse economic situation is attributed to the outside. Individuals consequently oppose economic policies, distrust economic institutions and take part in protest activities. The project encompasses a paper testing the individual welfare predictions of new new trade theory and the link to subjective perceptions of well-being with South African panel data. Furthermore, it aims to test the importance of comparison to others with similar abilities and the translation of grievances into political discontent with a survey experiment.

Contributors:

• Stefanie Walter

Sources of Funding:

• Universität Zürich (position pursuing an academic career)

Contacts:

Internal:

Tabea Palmtag

Summary:

This project examines disintegration referenda, that is referenda aimed at the partial or full withdrawal of individual member states from international institutions, which present a new but growing challenge to international cooperation. This project aims at improving our understanding how disintegration referendums challenge existing institutions and the remaining member states, and how they respond to such referendums. It focuses both on the actions of foreign governments during the referendum campaign and on how the negotiating processes and outcomes surrounding the negotiation process following a successful disintegration referendum affect regime stability by influencing domestic politics and public opinion in the remaining member states. Its theoretical contribution lies in conceptualizing disintegration referenda as a specific type of sovereignty referendum that confronts international institutions and their remaining members with a trade-off between economic prosperity and regime stability. Empirically, the project focuses on disintegration referenda in Greece, the UK, and Switzerland.

Contributors:

• Stefanie Walter

Sources of Funding:

• Stiftung für wissenschaftliche Forschung, Universität Zürich

Collaborating Institutions:

• Elias Dinas, Oxford University
• Nikitas Konstantinidis, LSE
• Ignacio Jurado, University of York

Contacts:

Internal:

Stefanie Walter

Transversal Research Priorities:

• Internationale Kooperation

Summary:

Why do some governments compensate losers for the adverse effects of trade, while others reward winners, often exacerbating distributive conflict and inequality? A standard view in the literature is that trade leads to greater demand and supply of social policy. But this explanation cannot account for the striking policy differences across countries for given levels of trade exposure. I argue that economic geography and electoral institutions condition the effect of trade exposure on compensation. Trade leads to greater compensation when losers are geographically concentrated and politicians have incentives to target specific constituencies. Relative to geographically dispersed trade losers, concentrated losers constitute attractive targets for politicians elected in small electoral districts. This conditional theory contrasts with views positing a generalized relationship between trade and welfare spending.

Contributors:

• Stefanie Walter

Sources of Funding:

• Universität Zürich (position pursuing an academic career)

Summary:

What explains the striking variation in the adoption of non-contributory cash transfers around the developing world? Using panel data for 64 developing democracies, we find that left governments are likely to adopt such programs when the informal sector is large and rigid labour markets threaten protected insiders with exclusion, but not otherwise. Using cross-sectional survey data for Latin America, we find evidence for the demand-side mechanism that insiders support transfers when labour markets are rigid. in a related project, I explore the micro-foundations of this argument and draw on unique survey data from Argentina to analyse how differences in labour market status shape individual support for non-contributory transfers and active labour market policies.

Contributors:

• Stefanie Walter

Sources of Funding:

• Universität Zürich (position pursuing an academic career)

Collaborating Institutions:

• Santiago Lopez-Cariboni, Catholic University of Uruguay

Summary:

The euro crisis has turned into the most serious challenge the European Union has ever had to face. Although the causes of the crisis are increasingly well understood, the politics of the crisis are not. This project aims at shedding light on three important puzzles that existing research has not yet been able to resolve. First, why have some governments been able to implement far-reaching reforms, whereas reform progress has been rather spotty in other crisis countries? Second, why have some countries seen serious political turmoil, while others have experienced less public and political opposition? And finally, why have surplus countries been willing to bail out deficit countries, but have varied in their willingness to adjust their own economic policies in an effort the ease the adjustment burden on the South? The project argues that these differences can be explained by the variation in societies’ vulnerabilities to different types of policy responses to the crisis. The argument builds on the insight that the euro crisis is, at its root, a balance-of-payments crisis. The imbalances that underlie such crises can be resolved either through significant economic policy adjustments both in the (peripheral) deficit or the (northern) surplus countries, or be addressed by providing external financing to deficit countries. I argue that the resulting distributive struggles surrounding the politics of the euro crisis in surplus and deficit countries are distinct but related, and should therefore be analyzed in a unified framework. The chances for swift and substantial adjustment are enhanced when politically influential interest groups exhibit a low vulnerability to at least one type of adjustment. In contrast, in contexts where significant parts of society are vulnerable to any adjustment, crisis politics is very contentious. Surplus countries with such a vulnerability profile attempt to push most of the adjustment burden onto deficit countries. In return, they are willing to provide external financing to deficit countries, but this generates conflict about on who should bear this financial burden. Since deficit countries are in a weaker position to push adjustment costs onto surplus countries, the distributional conflicts there revolve around how the cost of adjustment is to be distributed among different societal groups. Empirically, the project examines how vulnerability profiles affect domestic crisis politics and policies on two levels of analysis, the interest-group and the national level. It uses a mixed-methods research design that combines two sets of qualitative comparative case studies of the domestic and international politics of the euro crisis in surplus and deficit countries, respectively, with a quantitative analysis of national vulnerability profiles and crisis politics in a wider set of countries. The overarching goal of the project is to generate an encompassing picture of the distributional politics of the euro crisis and a better understanding of the constraints under which European policymakers operate in their attempts to solve the crisis.

Contributors:

• Stefanie Walter

Sources of Funding:

• SNF (Personen- und Projektförderung)

Collaborating Institutions:

• Mark Copelovitch, University of Wisconsin
• Jeffry Frieden, Harvard University

ZORA:

127241

External Resources:

global.oup.com

Contacts:

Internal:

Stefanie Walter

External:

Dr. Raphael Reinke (UZH)

Transversal Research Priorities:

• Internationale Kooperation

Summary:

This project investigates the impact of international economic flows on breakdown and survival of autocratic regimes. Research in this area is scarce and remains theoretically and empirically unclear. Using insights from recent research about the politics of authoritarian rule, this thesis proposes an actor-centered model of regime change focusing on the interplay between the autocratic leader and both the popular masses and the regime elite. Building on this, globalization-induced distributional conflicts are introduced. I hypothesize that economic globalization helps autocrats to maintain their power through a legitimacy-enhancing and cooptation-enabling effect. But, this is conditional on the distributional effects of economic globalization. These implications are analyzed with cross-national statistical models as well as in-depth case studies.

Contributors:

• Stefanie Walter

Sources of Funding:

• Universität Zürich (position pursuing an academic career)

Summary:

Recent research has shown that new labour market divides resulting from the rise of non- standard employment are reflected in the political preferences of the workers affected. Yet, our knowledge of the stance of political parties on the issue is extremely limited even descriptively. Do they address non-standard employment in the context of election campaigns – if so, which parties do? How do they frame non-standard work and what policies do they propose? This project tackles these questions by analysing party programmes in four large Continental and Southern Europe states where non-standard employment is widespread and not well integrated into the systems of social protection. We find that attention to and criticism of non-standard work follows a left-right distribution, but we also find differences within the left: Left-libertarian parties address the issue more specifically, while more traditional left-wing parties often link it to other labour concerns.

Contributors:

• Stefanie Walter

Sources of Funding:

• Universität Zürich (position pursuing an academic career)

Collaborating Institutions:

• Georg Picot, University of Bergen

Summary:

This project analyzes policy responses, crisis politics, and distributive outcomes of national crisis management towards the global financial crisis and the euro crisis.

Contributors:

• Stefanie Walter

Sources of Funding:

• Universität Zürich (position pursuing an academic career)

Contacts:

Internal:

Stefanie Walter

Summary:

This project investigates how individuals’ exposure to global competition influences their feeling of economic security and a wide range of policy preferences, and how the emergence of new conflict lines between beneficiaries and losers of globalization changes the constituencies of political parties.I argue that globalization has very heterogenous effects, which depend both on individuals' exposure to global competition and their factor-endowments. This suggests that even within the same industry, exposure to global competition can be harmful to some people, but not to others. In developed countries, high-skilled individuals in exposed industries or occupations can be characterized as “globalization winners,” because they can sell their skills to global markets. In contrast, low-skilled individuals working in an exposed sector face serious problems. The goods they produce are most likely to be substituted with imports from low-wage countries and their jobs are the most likely to be moved abroad, so that they can be classified as “globalization losers.” Individuals working in sheltered industries or occupations constitute an intermediate category. I use individual-level data to test the implications of these differentiated effects of globalization.

Contributors:

• Stefanie Walter

Sources of Funding:

• No project-specific funding

Contacts:

Internal:

Stefanie Walter

Keywords:

• globalization
• offshoring
• policy preferences
• labor-market risk