Recent research has established that employment risk shapes social policy preferences. However, risk is often conceptualized as an alternative measure of the socio-economic status. We show that employment risk and socio-economic status are distinct, crosscutting determinants of social policy preferences. More specifically, we analyze the policy preferences of high-skilled labor market outsiders as a cross-pressured group. We first establish that labor market vulnerability has spread well into the more highly educated segments of the population. We then show that the effect of labor market vulnerability on social policy preferences even increases with higher educational attainment. We conclude that that labor market risk and educational status are not interchangeable and that the high skilled are particularly sensitive to the experience of labor market risk. Thereby, our findings point to a potential cross-class alliance between more highly and lower skilled vulnerable individuals in support of a redistributive and activating welfare state. Thus, they have far-reaching implications for our understanding of both the politicization of insider/outsider divides and the politics of welfare support.JEL Classification: 12 P Unemployment benefits, J21 labor force and employment, size and structure, H53 government expenditures and welfare programs

This article investigates the political consequences of occupational change in times of rapid technological advancement and sheds light on the economic and cultural roots of right-wing populism. A growing body of research shows that the disadvantages of a transforming employment structure are strongly concentrated among semiskilled routine workers in the lower middle class. I argue that individual employment trajectories and relative shifts in the social hierarchy are key to better understand recent political disruptions. A perception of relative economic decline among politically powerful groups—not their impoverishment—drives support for conservative and, especially, right-wing populist parties. Individual-level panel data from three postindustrial democracies and original survey data demonstrate this relationship. A possible interpretation of the findings is that traditional welfare policy might be an ineffective remedy against the ascent of right-wing populism.

This is a pre-print of an article that investigates the political consequences of occupational change in times of rapid technological advancement and sheds light on the economic and cultural roots of right-wing populism. A growing body of research shows that the disadvantages of a transforming employment structure are strongly concentrated among semiskilled routine workers in the lower middle class. I argue that individual employment trajectories and relative shifts in the social hierarchy are key to better understand recent political disruptions. A perception of relative economic decline among politically powerful groups—not their impoverishment—drives support for conservative and, especially, right-wing populist parties. Individual-level panel data from three postindustrial democracies and original survey data demonstrate this relationship. A possible interpretation of the findings is that traditional welfare policy might be an ineffective remedy against the ascent of right-wing populism.

Welfare state reform in times of austerity is notoriously difficult because most citizens oppose retrenchment of social benefits. Governments, thus, tend to combine cutbacks with selective benefit expansions, thereby creating trade-offs: to secure new advantages, citizens must accept painful cutbacks. Prior research has been unable to assess the effectiveness of compensating components in restrictive welfare reforms. We provide novel evidence on feasible reform strategies by applying conjoint survey analysis to a highly realistic direct democratic setting of multidimensional welfare state reform. Drawing on an original survey of Swiss citizens' attitudes toward comprehensive pension reform, we empirically demonstrate that built-in trade-offs strongly enhance the prospects of restrictive welfare reforms. Our findings indicate that agency matters: governments and policy makers can and must grant the right compensations to the relevant opposition groups to overcome institutional inertia.

Explaining social policy preferences has become a major topic in comparative politics with labor market risk as a key determinant of these preferences. However, one question continues to loom large: are preference divides blurred by mixed households, that is, secure labor market participants living with vulnerable partners? In this article, we build on the insider-outsider literature and show that while the household does matter, its mitigating effect is limited in scope and strongly conditional on gender. Women's preferences depend on their partner's labor market situation, while men's preferences are unaffected by it. Overall, only a small minority of the population across Western Europe benefits from a "household safety net." Our findings have important implications for understanding the politicization of insider-outsider divides.

Automation, digitalization and smart software fundamentally reshape the employment structure of post-industrial societies. The share of routine jobs is constantly shrinking while non-routine jobs at both ends of the skill distribution tend to grow. We contend that the existing political science literature has not sufficiently connected the distributive implications of technological change with contemporary political disruptions. The fact that disadvantages are strongly concentrated among blue- and white-collar routine workers in the lower middle class is of crucial importance. Routine workers are a large and electorally relevant group with all the necessary means for political participation. Increasingly bleak prospects in the labor markets of tomorrow create a demand for social, cultural, and economic protectionism. Socially conservative parties in general and right-wing populist parties in particular have recognized the electoral potential of disaffected routine workers and skillfully address and acknowledge their anxieties. We conclude that a lower middle class no longer protected from the vagaries of economic modernization is a potential electoral game changer.

This paper explores the employment trajectories of workers exposed to technological change. Based on individual-level panel data from the UK, we first confirm that the share of middle-skilled routine workers has declined, while non-routine jobs in both high- and low-skilled occupations have increased, consistent with country-level patterns of job polarization. Next, we zoom in on the actual transition patterns of threatened routine workers. Despite the aggregate decline in routine work, most affected workers manage to remain in the labor market during the time they are in the study: about 64% “survive” in routine work, 24% switch to other (better or worse paying) jobs, almost 10% exit routine work via retirement and only a small minority end up unemployed. Based on this finding, the final part of our analysis studies the economic implications of remaining in a digitalizing occupational environment. We rely on an original approach that specifically captures the impact of information and communication technology at the industry level on labor market outcomes and find evidence for a digital Matthew effect: while outcomes are, on average, positive, it is first and foremost non-routine workers in cognitively demanding jobs that benefit from the penetration of new technologies in the workplace. In the conclusions, we discuss if labor market polarization is a likely source of intensified political conflict.

How do economic grievances affect citizens’ inclination to protest? Given rising levels of inequality and widespread economic hardship in the aftermath of the Great Recession, this question is crucial for political science: if adverse economic conditions depress citizens’ engagement, as many contributions have argued, then the economic crisis may well feed into a crisis of democracy. However, the existing research on the link between economic grievances and political participation remains empirically inconclusive. It is argued in this article that this is due to two distinct shortcomings, which are effectively addressed by combining the strengths of political economy and social movement theories. Based on ESS and EU‐SILC data from 2006–2012, as well as newly collected data on political protest in 28 European countries, a novel, more fine‐grained conceptualisation of objective economic grievances considerably improves our understanding of the direct link between economic grievances and protest behaviour. While structural economic disadvantage (i.e., the level of grievances) unambiguously de‐mobilises individuals, the deterioration of economic prospects (i.e., a change in grievances) instead increases political activity. Revealing these two countervailing effects provides an important clarification that helps reconcile many seemingly conflicting findings in the existing literature. Second, the article shows that the level of political mobilisation substantially moderates this direct link between individual hardship and political activity. In a strongly mobilised environment, even structural economic disadvantage is no longer an impediment to political participation. There is a strong political message in this interacting factor: if the presence of organised and visible political action is a decisive signal for citizens that conditions the micro‐level link between economic grievances and protest, then democracy itself – that is, organised collective action – can help sustain political equality and prevent the vicious circle of democratic erosion.