Silja Häusermann – författare

This book challenges existing theories of welfare state change by analyzing pension reforms in France, Germany, and Switzerland between 1970 and 2004. It explains why all three countries were able to adopt far-reaching reforms, adapting their pension regimes to both financial austerity and new social risks. In a radical departure from the neo-institutionalist emphasis on policy stability, the book argues that socio-structural change has led to a multidimensional pension reform agenda. A variety of cross-cutting lines of political conflict, emerging from the transition to a post-industrial economy, allowed governments to engage in strategies of political exchange and coalition-building, fostering broad cross-class coalitions in support of major reform packages. Methodologically, the book proposes a novel strategy to analyze lines of conflict, configurations of political actors, and coalitional dynamics over time. This strategy combines quantitative analyses of actor configurations based on coded policy positions with in-depth case studies.

This book challenges existing theories of welfare state change by analyzing pension reforms in France, Germany, and Switzerland between 1970 and 2004. It explains why all three countries were able to adopt far-reaching reforms, adapting their pension regimes to both financial austerity and new social risks. In a radical departure from the neo-institutionalist emphasis on policy stability, the book argues that socio-structural change has led to a multidimensional pension reform agenda. A variety of cross-cutting lines of political conflict, emerging from the transition to a post-industrial economy, allowed governments to engage in strategies of political exchange and coalition-building, fostering broad cross-class coalitions in support of major reform packages. Methodologically, the book proposes a novel strategy to analyze lines of conflict, configurations of political actors, and coalitional dynamics over time. This strategy combines quantitative analyses of actor configurations based on coded policy positions with in-depth case studies.

Western Europe is experiencing growing levels of political polarization between parties of the New Left and the Far Right. The authors argue that this antagonism reflects the emergence of a social cleavage between universalism and particularism. To understand cleavage formation in the midst of party system fragmentation and the proliferation of new competitors, they emphasize the crucial role of group identities. Anchored in social structure, group identities help us understand why specific party appeals resonate with certain groups, thereby mediating the link between socio-structural change and broader party blocks defined by their distinctive ideologies along the new cleavage. Based on original survey data from France, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK, this Element presents evidence for the formation of a universalism-particularism cleavage across European party systems that diverge strongly on institutional and political characteristics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Western Europe is experiencing growing levels of political polarization between parties of the New Left and the Far Right. The authors argue that this antagonism reflects the emergence of a social cleavage between universalism and particularism. To understand cleavage formation in the midst of party system fragmentation and the proliferation of new competitors, they emphasize the crucial role of group identities. Anchored in social structure, group identities help us understand why specific party appeals resonate with certain groups, thereby mediating the link between socio-structural change and broader party blocks defined by their distinctive ideologies along the new cleavage. Based on original survey data from France, Germany, Switzerland, and the UK, this Element presents evidence for the formation of a universalism-particularism cleavage across European party systems that diverge strongly on institutional and political characteristics. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Beyond Social Democracy examines the electoral decline of social democratic parties and how distinctive strategic moves might enable them to salvage different segments of their former electoral coalitions. Social democratic decline, however, does not imply the demise of basic tenets of the parties' programmatic appeals. Under the impact of novel twenty-first-century political-economic challenges, these concerns are also invoked and repackaged with new ideas by novel left parties. Empirically, voter movements show that social democratic parties incur net losses mostly to these other leftist parties, while sustaining a balanced, but voluminous exchange with center-right parties. Contrary to commonly held preconceptions, there is little net loss to the new extreme Right. These findings will be pertinent to anyone interested in understanding or devising party strategies in twenty-first-century democracies. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Beyond Social Democracy examines the electoral decline of social democratic parties and how distinctive strategic moves might enable them to salvage different segments of their former electoral coalitions. Social democratic decline, however, does not imply the demise of basic tenets of the parties' programmatic appeals. Under the impact of novel twenty-first-century political-economic challenges, these concerns are also invoked and repackaged with new ideas by novel left parties. Empirically, voter movements show that social democratic parties incur net losses mostly to these other leftist parties, while sustaining a balanced, but voluminous exchange with center-right parties. Contrary to commonly held preconceptions, there is little net loss to the new extreme Right. These findings will be pertinent to anyone interested in understanding or devising party strategies in twenty-first-century democracies. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

This book serves as a sequel to two distinguished volumes on capitalism: Continuity and Change in Contemporary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1999) and Order and Conflict in Contemporary Capitalism (1985). Both volumes took stock of major economic challenges advanced industrial democracies faced, as well as the ways political and economic elites dealt with them. However, during the last decades, the structural environment of advanced capitalist democracies has undergone profound changes: sweeping deindustrialization, tertiarization of the employment structure, and demographic developments. This book provides a synthetic view, allowing the reader to grasp the nature of these structural transformations and their consequences in terms of the politics of change, policy outputs, and outcomes. In contrast to functionalist and structuralist approaches, the book advocates and contributes to a 'return of electoral and coalitional politics' to political economy research.