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Table of Contents List of Tables  List of Figures  List of Abbrevations  Preface  1 Introduction  1.1 Empirical puzzle  1.2 The arguments in brief  1.3 Structure of the book  2 Theoretical Background  2.1 The political-economic and societal background to Third Way policies  Social Democracy's transformation towards the Third Way  2.2 Social policy and the welfare state as a base for social democratic alignment  2.3 Welfare state reform as a catalyst for partisan dealignment  Comparison of traditional social democratic and Third Way social policy  2.4 Decommodification, social class and conceptualising the social democratic core constituency  2.5 Political system, party competition and welfare reforms  The impact of the electoral system for the electoral effects of the reforms  Competitor parties for social democracy after Third Way reforms under pr  Challenge from the left  Challenge from the right   THE ELECTORAL CONSEQUENCES OF THIRD WAY WELFARE STATE REFORMS Credibility considerations and the prospects for challenger parties  Mainstream parties as potential challengers  2.6 Social democracy and declining class voting  Design and Methods  3.1 Case selection and strategy of comparison  3.2 Analysis of reforms  3.3 Analysis of the electoral consequences of reforms  3.4 Data sources for the statistical analysis  3.5 Organisation of chapters  United Kingdom  4.1 The social policy of the Labour Party  4.2 Alignment of the social democratic core constituency in the United Kingdom  4.3 Welfare state reforms in

This article investigates to what extent social democratic parties still benefit from the support of union members at the polls. Not only are social democratic parties confronted with new competitors in the party systems, but also the union confederations of the socialist labour movement are in some countries losing their dominant position due to the rise of separate professional confederations. It is argued in the article that the effect of union membership on voting choice is conditioned by the structure of the trade union movement. The support of union members for social democracy is fostered by the strength of the confederations historically close to this party family, while it is hampered when strong separate (or politically unaffiliated) white‐collar confederations exist. Using European Social Survey and Swedish Public Opinion data, the article shows that social democratic parties still enjoy important support from trade union members, but at the same time are under fierce competition from bourgeois and green parties among members of white‐collar confederations. This reinforces the challenges for social democracy to build new voters’ coalitions in post‐industrial societies.

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 'invisible' policy instruments, e.g. a change in indexation rules. Expansion should, by implication, mainly happen using 'visible' policy instruments, e.g. a change in nominal benefits. We have coded 1,030 legislative reforms of old-age pensions and unemployment protection in Britain, Denmark, Finland, and Germany from 1974 to 2014. With this unique data at hand, we find substantial support for this crucial new politics proposition.