A comprehensive introduction to public policy and the policy cycle, the fully revised second
edition of this popular textbook offers a practical guide to the topic while remaining …

This paper describes the empirical evidence on partisan politics in OECD panel studies. I
elaborate on the research designs, the measurement of government ideology and why the …

Background Do political parties matter to health? Do they affect population health either
directly or through welfare states' social policies and the eligibility, affordability and quality of …

This article takes stock of and reviews the comparative literature on blame avoidance
strategies in social policy reform to identify the conditions under which blame avoidance …

A core, but so far untested, proposition of the new politics perspective, originally introduced
by Paul Pierson, is that welfare state cutbacks will be implemented using so-called …

Das Kapitel stellt mit der Parteiendifferenzthese einen der klassischen Ansätze zur
Erklärung von Public Policies vor. Dazu werden in einem ersten Schritt die theoretischen …

What policies do government prioritize when they implement austerity? I argue that
governments choose the path of least resistance when they engage in fiscal consolidations …

In the debate on welfare politics replacement rates have been hailed as a measure far more
appropriate to identify retrenchment than expenditure. However, this contribution …

Does government partisanship still matter in the era of welfare retrenchment? The
comprehensive quantitative research on this question offers contradicting answers. Our …

Comparative public policy is a blooming research area. It also suffers from some curious
blind spots. In this paper we discuss four of these:(1) the obsession with covariance, which …