New Administration, New Immigration Regime: Do Parties Matter After All? A UK Case Study

Abstract

Research on the impact of parties on public policy, and on immigration policy in particular, often finds limited evidence of partisan influence. In this paper, we examine immigration policymaking in the UK coalition government. Our case provides evidence that parties in government can have more of an impact on policy than previous studies acknowledge, but this only becomes apparent when we open up the 'black box' between election outcomes and policy outputs. By examining how, when and why election pledges are turned into government policies, we show that partisan influence depends not only on dynamics between the coalition partners, but how these dynamics interact with interdepartmental conflicts and lobbying by organized interests. In-depth process tracing allows us to see these complex dynamics, which easily get lost in large n comparisons of pledges and outputs, let alone outcomes.

Migration and Healthcare Reforms in Spain: Symbolic Politics, Converging Outputs, Oppositions from the Field

“…Since the 1990s, immigration has become an increasingly salient issue in political and public debates. Along the political continuum, parties continue to differ significantly in their discourses and proposed measures on migrants' integration and welfare entitlements, giving the impression of long-standing differences between right-wing and left-wing parties (Hampshire & Bale 2015;Natter, Czaika & de Haas 2020). When we compare partisan discourses with policy outputs, however, our findings challenge the idea that left-wing parties are more inclusive towards migrants, and MIS in particular, when it comes to actual policy reforms.…”

“…From this perspective, the dominance of traditional partisanship explanations in the understanding of welfare-migration politics appears quite surprising. As outlined above, the vast majority of existing scholarship strongly supports the enduring relevance of left-wing versus rightwing governing parties in explaining policy inclusiveness/restrictiveness in Europe (Bale 2008;Hampshire & Bale 2015;Lutz 2019;Piccoli 2019;Yilmaz 2012). In contrast to the analysis of admission policies, where pro-immigration and anti-immigration positions cut across the political spectrum, these studies converge on the 'parties matter' thesis when it comes to migrants' social protection: left-wing parties are more likely to adopt policies that grant labour and welfare rights to migrants (including MIS), while right-wing parties usually oppose such measures (Natter, Czaika & de Haas 2020).…”

“…Partisan explanations of policy restrictiveness feature heavily in scholarly debates on migration. Immigration has long been a strikingly divisive issue in the political arena (Akkerman 2015;Green-Pedersen & Odmalm 2008), and research often supports the enduring relevance of left-wing versus right-wing governing parties in explaining reforms on immigration policies and migrants' social rights (Bale 2008;Hampshire & Bale 2015;Lutz 2019;Piccoli 2019;Yilmaz 2012;Natter, Czaika & de Haas 2020). Not surprisingly, this perspective in migration research has strongly re-emerged in current times of permanent austerity and migration crises, in which radical and centre-right parties increasinglyand often successfullyexploit the 'immigration-as-a-threat-to-thewelfare-state' card in electoral struggles.…”

Ideas and agency in immigration policy: A discursive institutionalist approach

“…Labour was able to mine a relatively conducive public philosophy, but as this required no paradigmatic shift, it was then relatively easy for opponents, and indeed the Labour Party itself, to resuscitate a more restrictive discourse. Thus, as Germany has moved towards a more open stance, since 2005 the British immigration debate has become increasingly restrictive, with the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) articulating an anti‐immigrant discourse, the Conservatives committing to reducing net migration (Hampshire & Bale ) and, most recently, immigration dominating the EU referendum campaign, contributing to the vote to leave in June 2016. While some elements of Labour's reframing of migration policy at the programmatic level remain intact, such as the idea of selective recruitment of migrant workers through the Points Based System, references to cosmopolitan ideas or a national philosophy of openness are rarely heard today.…”

Explaining policy deadlock: the case of Sarkozy’s integration policy

“…A number of studies highlight that different sets of actors can influence policymaking process, including interest groups (Hampshire and Bale 2015;Freeman 1995;2001), ethnic groups (Abadan-Unat 2017) and courts (Guiraudon 1997;Joppke 1998).…”