In this paper we argue that autocratic regimes are no less likely than democracies to adopt old-age pensions, although autocratic programs are less universal in their coverage. Our theoretical argument focuses on the strong incentives that autocratic regimes have for enacting and maintaining such programs to ensure regime survival. Autocratic pension programs can be considered club goods that I) are targeted to critical supporting groups and II) solve credible commitment problems on promises of future distribution, thereby mitigating probability of regime breakdown. We test three implications from the argument, drawing on a novel dataset on welfare state programs and including 140 countries with time series from the 1880s. First, we find that autocracies are no less likely than democracies to have old-age pension programs. But, second, autocracies have less universal pension programs than democracies. Third, pension programs effectively reduce the probability of autocratic breakdown. * We are grateful to Øyvind Skorge,

Abstract:Many studies have found that countries with Ghent systems of unemployment insurance have higher rates of unionization than countries with state--administered unemployment insurance. With data going further back in history, this paper demonstrates that the introduction of Ghent systems had no effect on unionization rates. We argue that the Ghent effect identified in the existing literature came about as a result of increasing state subsidization and benefit generosity in the 1950s and 1960s. Exploring the partisan politics surrounding Ghent systems, we show that progressive Liberals ("Social Liberals") favored Ghent designs while Social Democrats favored state--administered unemployment insurance before the Second World War. We also present some evidence suggesting that Left governments, faced with Ghent systems that were not of their choosing, promoted state subsidization in the postwar era, and thus helped generate the Ghent effect identified in the existing literature.2 This paper engages in a historical--comparative analysis of the effects of the design of unemployment insurance on rates of unionization and the politics of designing unemployment insurance in some twenty countries that are today industrialized, rich and democratic. The motivation behind our study is as follows.

In this paper we argue that autocratic regimes are no less likely than democracies to adopt old-age pensions, although autocratic programs are less universal in their coverage. Our theoretical argument focuses on the strong incentives that autocratic regimes have for enacting and maintaining such programs to ensure regime survival. Autocratic pension programs can be considered club goods that I) are targeted to critical supporting groups and II) solve credible commitment problems on promises of future distribution, thereby mitigating probability of regime breakdown. We test three implications from the argument, drawing on a novel dataset on welfare state programs and including 140 countries with time series from the 1880s. First, we find that autocracies are no less likely than democracies to have old-age pension programs. But, second, autocracies have less universal pension programs than democracies. Third, pension programs effectively reduce the probability of autocratic breakdown. * We are grateful to Øyvind Skorge,

We propose that the extent to which political parties are institutionalized shapes welfare state development. Institutionalized parties allow politicians to overcome coordination problems, avoid capture by special interests, and form stable linkages with broad social groups. These features both enable and incentivize politicians to pursue generous and universal welfare policies.Employing recent measures of party institutionalization and welfare law features, we test implications from our argument on data covering 169 countries and extending back to 1900.Even when accounting for country-and year-fixed effects and institutional features such as electoral system, regime type and state capacity, we find robust evidence that party institutionalization leads to more extensive, universal, and generous welfare arrangements. The relationship is more pronounced in democracies, but exists also in autocracies. When disaggregating party institutionalization and evaluating mechanisms, the linkages that institutionalized parties form with social groups constitute one important, but not the only relevant, factor. 1968; Lindert, 2004). Policies, in various areas, turned more universal. Concurrently, politics in many countries also turned more universal, both regarding which social groups participated in public decision making and regarding geographical scope, with a shift in emphasis from the local to the national level in many countries (see Somanathan 2001). The capacity of many states increased (Fukuyama, 2015), suffrage was expanded (also in countries where elections were far from free and fair; e.g., Miller, 2015) and new constitutions and various national-level institutions were developed (e.g., Elkins, 2010). Key in this process was the development of political parties competing and otherwise operating on the national arena, both in democratic (e.

Trade union membership is an indicator of social integration. In this paper, we study the gap in unionization rates between immigrants and natives using high‐quality population‐wide administrative data from Norway. We document that the average unionization rate among immigrants increases strongly with time since arrival, but it never catches up fully with that of natives. Variables describing labour market sorting explain well above half of the gap, mainly because immigrants tend to be employed in firms and industries with lower levels of unionization. There are significant differences in immigrants' unionization by their country of origin, but these differences are also largely accounted for by background characteristics and labour market sorting — and they do not extend to the second generation. We conclude that existing research, which has mainly relied on survey data, has understated the importance of labour market sorting for immigrants' low unionization rates.