What leads states to adopt more restrictive labour policies? The conventional wisdom is that unified Republican states, with help from conservative political networks, are more likely to adopt restrictions on labour unions. We argue that party control of government matters but is constrained by voter preferences and the power of organised labour. We create new estimates of state-level public support for unions by income thirds using dynamic multilevel regression and poststratification. Using this measure, we predict the adoption of restrictive labour policies, such as right-to-work and minimum wage preemption laws. We find that Republican governments are less likely to adopt restrictive policies when unions are strong and when union support among middle- and low-income earners is high. Interestingly, these results run contrary to much of the literature on the unequal representation of the wealthy in public policy.

This article examines the conditions under which interest groups interact with political parties. Existing research finds that interest group–political party interactions in most western democracies have become more open and contingent over time. The close ideological and formal organisational ties that once characterised these relations have gradually been replaced by alternative, more pragmatic forms of cooperation. However, most of this research stresses the importance of the structural factors underpinning these links over time and across countries, but sheds little light on the factors driving short-term interest group–party interactions. Here, by drawing on survey data on Spanish interest groups obtained between December 2016 and May 2017, this article seeks to fill this gap by taking into account party status, issue salience and a group’s resources as explanatory variables. It shows that mainstream parties are the primary targets of interest groups, that groups dealing with salient issues are more likely to contact political parties and that the groups with most resources interact with a larger number of parties.

What are the effects of fiscal imbalances, and austerity, on regional-level spending? To answer this question, we examine an original dataset of yearly spending decisions of regional governments in Italy and Spain between 2003 and 2015. We find that the rise in regional deficits has an important negative effect on regional governments’ spending. The strength of this effect is, however, mitigated by the presence of a left-wing party in regional office. In addition, we uncover an important variation in the extent of cutbacks across policy sectors: regional governments tend to protect the health sector and focus their retrenchment efforts on social assistance and running of public institutions. Partisanship matters here too, as left-wing parties tend to protect healthcare more than their right-wing rivals. These findings bear relevance for understanding the role of partisanship and policy sector in the process of public retrenchment in multi-level states.

Drawing on a principal–agent framework the article analyses the European Union (EU) politics of delegation in the post-Maastricht era. By means of statistical analysis, it tests the impact of several variables upon the selection of national and supranational agents, as well as on the discretion they enjoy, on the basis of a recently collected data set of EU laws. Findings reveal that pooling and policy complexity favour the involvement of supranational actors in the implementation of EU laws. Moreover, the degree of supranational integration of a policy affects the likelihood of choosing supranational implementers. On the one hand, the Commission enjoys higher discretion vis-à-vis national actors when qualified majority voting applies, and when higher levels of conflict in the Council of Ministers is present. On the other, conflict between the European Parliament and the Council under codecision seems associated with lower supranational discretion, although the result needs further corroboration.

The literature has described trade unions’ positions towards both precarious workers and migrant workers as ambivalent. By studying an extreme case, the meat-processing industries in the United Kingdom and in Germany, we show how trade unions were decisive in both countries in bringing exploitative working conditions on the political agenda and in advancing policy change. However, the strategies through which trade unions contributed to this differed remarkably, highlighting different causal pathways in both countries. The British case can clearly be seen as an example of successful union revitalisation by relying on innovative strategies. In contrast, the German story exhibits a strong reliance on a more traditional approach to improving workers’ rights, which was only successful after employers were willing to improve working conditions in the sector as well. Our analysis shows that policy change can happen despite unfavourable conditions and weak actors, especially if these actors make strategic use of situational conditions.

The policy studies literature is divided on how information processing takes place in policy processes. Punctuated equilibrium theory claims that policymakers tend to process information disproportionately, giving more weight to some incoming signals than to others. By contrast, thermostatic models of policymaking argue that policymakers respond in a more proportionate way. In this paper, we analyse information processing in the adoption of Total Allowable Catches (TACs) under the European Union’s (EU) Common Fisheries Policy. Based on a novel measure for the proportionality of information processing, it shows that over time TACs have become more closely aligned with incoming signals about fish stocks. This development can be explained through a combination of changing discourses around fisheries conservation and institutional adjustments in EU fisheries policy. This analysis has implications for the debate between punctuated equilibrium and thermostatic models of policymaking and our understanding of the effectiveness of EU fisheries policies.

Interest groups cannot advocate on every issue they might consider relevant. They must decide what issues to prioritise and which ones to leave to one side. In this article, we examine how groups seek to balance different internal and external considerations when prioritizing issues, and which factors might explain variation in the relative strength of these drivers. We integrate data of a survey of national interest groups in Australia with findings from interviews with a cross section of high-profile groups. While the literature often suggests a clash between external political considerations and internal membership demands, we find that groups view these drivers as largely compatible. Our explanatory analysis points to the policy orientation and insider status of the group, its democratic character, and the extent to which it faces competition for membership contributions, as important factors shaping the relative strength of distinct drivers of internal agenda setting.

Evidence of a link between the retrenchment of the welfare state and the expansion of the penal state has sparked a debate about the existence of a nexus. In this study, we critically explore this link by focusing on political parties. First, we argue that welfare and penal policies are likely to follow distinct paths, with left-liberal/green parties pushing for less punitive penal and market-liberal/conservative parties for less generous welfare policy. Second, we only expect a nexus between both policy domains if conservative or “third way” social democratic governments are in power. The former follows a coherent ideology, the latter compensates for welfare retrenchment with tough-on-crime policies. We test these claims quantitatively on a unique dataset covering all changes to welfare and penal legislation in Denmark, Germany, the United Kingdom and France between 1990 and 2014 and find our expectations supported except conservative influence on the penal–welfare nexus.

Despite promises by European Union (EU) policymakers to “fundamentally change” cybersecurity certification, they have recently created a regime that is strikingly similar to already existing certification arrangements. How can we explain this puzzle? Through a process-tracing analysis based on 41 documents and 18 interviews, this article traces the development of the EU cybersecurity certification regime over the past two decades. It deconstructs certification into standardisation, accreditation, certification, and evaluation; analyses how each regime component changed over time; and discusses to what extent causal mechanisms that are derived from classic theories of EU integration explain the limited nature of policy change. The observed dynamics uncover a “Europeanization on Demand” model that allows national authorities to completely control the extent of integration. This study challenges the dichotomous understanding portrayed by EU integration literature, of mutually exclusive dynamics of market or core state powers integration, highlighting intriguing political dynamics in EU cybersecurity policymaking.