How to please voters without alienating friends? Parties, organised interests and advocacy coalitions in Swiss immigration policy

Abstract

This article seeks to explain why and how political parties adopt more restrictive migration policy positions by using Paul Sabatier's Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF). While a number of studies have focused almost exclusively on electoral factors to explain this anti-immigration turn, this article argues that policies and cooperation constraints with organised interests for purposes of coalition maintenance are also fundamental factors to understand change in party positions. Using the Swiss case as an empirical application, the article first shows how an increasingly anti-immigration policy discourse by parties has been triggered by a series of exogenous shocks (economic crisis, European integration and changes in partisan power relationships). Within advocacy coalitions, parties have sought to accommodate changing voter preferences with longstanding connections with organised interests. Centre-right parties have turned to an ever more restrictive stance on selective aspects of immigration policy (third country migration, asylum, access to citizenship) without challenging high levels of EU labour migration so central for employers. Social Democrats, for their part, have had to negotiate between the preferences of their middle-class voters keen on multiculturalism and those of trade unions whose base has become increasingly opposed to migration.

There and Back Again: A Tale of the Advocacy Coalition Framework

“…In many cases, the number of documents analyzed are not provided (e.g., Princen, 2007;Roßegger & Ramin, 2013;Stensdal, 2014). For example, Afonso (2014) states, "The analysis relies primarily on newspaper reports, government reports, responses to government consultations, party manifestos and secondary literature" (p. 573). In contrast, some applications identify and analyze hundreds or even over a thousand documents, such as Montefrio and Sonnenfeld (2011) and Fisher et al (2013).…”

Compensation or competition: Bias in immigrants' access to active labour market measures

“…Overall, Switzerland can be described as a country with large exposure to immigration from different origins, whereby the interests of the economy have always determined which groups were allowed to settle more easily. At the same time, the country's political right has traditionally been mobilising anti‐immigrant sentiments demanding immigration restriction and protection of the native workforce (e.g., Afonso, ).…”

Social concertation in Europe during the Great Recession: A fsQCA-study of social partner involvement

“…Governments may seek concertation when they are too weak to resort to unilateral action. We expect that they engage in concertation when their unilateral decision-making autonomy is compromised (Afonso 2014), such as under a minority government, a (grand) coalition with ideological conflicts or a fragmented party system. Moreover, the existence of a major veto point in federalist or bicameral political systems also limits the central government's capability.…”