Left–right party ideology and government policies: A meta–analysis

Abstract

Abstract. This paper summarizes how the partisan influence literature assesses the relationship between the left-right party composition of government and policy outputs through a meta-analysis of 693 parameter estimates of the party-policy relationship published in 43 empirical studies. Based on a simplified 'combined tests' meta-analytic technique, we show that the average correlation between the party composition of government and policy outputs is not significantly different from zero. A mutivariate logistic regression analysis examines how support for partisan theory is affected by a subset of mediating factors that can be applied to all the estimates under review. The analysis demonstrates that there are clearly identifiable conditions under which the probability of support for partisan theory can be substantially increased. We conclude that further research is needed on institutional and socio-economic determinants of public policy.

The size and scope of government in the US states: does party ideology matter?

“…In contrast, rightwing governments traditionally believe in the free market and favor less government intervention. 1 Scholars have examined to what extent and in which policy areas government ideology has influenced economic policy (e.g., Alesina et al 1997;Imbeau et al 2001;Pickering and Rockey 2011;Ferris and Voia 2011). The results suggest that rightwing governments have typically been more active in privatizing and deregulating product markets (see, for example, Bortolotti et al 2004;Potrafke 2010).…”

Europeanization and the retreat of the state

“…One classical theory of political economy links economic policy to the party orientation of the government. The party difference hypothesis (Hibbs 1977, Schmidt 1996 generally states that left-oriented governments that are composed of social-democratic or other left-wing parties promote economic interventions by the state while rightwing governments, consisting of liberal or conservative parties, put more faith in market forces and are as a rule more critical of state "interference" in the economy (Imbeau et al 2001), and consequently are more likely to be open to neo-liberal thinking. The drastic steps towards liberalization and deregulation taken by the neo-liberal conservative governments of Great Britain and the U.S. during the 1980s can be regarded as prime examples of this tendency.…”

Partisan politics: The empirical evidence from OECD panel studies

“…Franzese and Jusko (2006) describe studies on partisan politics with a focus on comparing the traditional and rational partisan theory. Imbeau et al (2001) performed a meta-analysis using 43 studies. I discuss the empirical evidence on partisan politics with a focus on OECD countries because most empirical studies use data for OECD countries and as compared to developing countries, data quality on macroeconomic variables etc.…”