The Partisan Politics of Law and Order

Abstract

The comparative study of law and order policies has mostly overlooked partisan politics as a possible explanation of differences between Western nations. Filling this gap in the literature, this book argues theoretically and substantiates empirically that law and order policies are heavily affected by partisan politics. By means of a large-N analysis of spending data and a new dataset on law and order legislation as well as four in-depth case studies, the empirical evidence shows that party competition and the party ideology of governments do affect policies—depending on the institutional context of a political system. Moreover, path dependencies tend to freeze these effects over a certain period of time creating positive feedback dynamics.

Twenty-first century political justice: Reflections on the blind spots of current debates on penality

“…25 Due to a lack of actual oversight by politicians and courts, this apparatus has had almost no incentive to abandon its enemy penology strategies. This phenomenon confirms what has been recently concluded by the US criminologist Schoenfeld (2018) in elaborating her 'state capacity' thesis, that is, the relevance of path dependence effects (see Pierson, 2004; see also Wenzelburger, 2020) in giving shape and perpetuating specific punitive schemes, eventually through more or less Lampedusian changes (Colmenero-Ferreiro & Brandariz, 2019). Such effects are both bureaucratic and cultural, and in the Spanish case are particularly epitomised by the part played by the National Court in giving currency to enemy penology practices in combatting subversive and grave criminal events, namely terrorism (Salellas, 2019).…”

“…The criminology literature exploring the impact of political factors on penality frequently adopts an institutionalist viewpoint (Karstedt, 2010; see also Wenzelburger, 2020). This body of research underlines the correlation among democratic institutions, democratic values and democratic practices (Karstedt, 2006(Karstedt, , 2015.…”

The liberal dream of smart detention? Algorithms and the politics of pretrial detention in the US states

“…Whereas Democrats are more likely to see these reforms as pushing forward more liberal and progressive ideals of rehabilitation and civil rights, while acknowledging budgetary benefits, Republicans are mainly swayed by the latter. In this sense, the question of whether to use risk assessment tools to assist pretrial decisions can be linked to broader ideological questions regarding penal policy rooted in liberal versus conservative values (Wenzelburger, 2020), which come to the fore in the very contested issue of pretrial detention decisions 5 . Liberal and rehabilitative views are especially likely to resonate with the use of PRATs because, as mentioned above, pretrial decisions concern the detention of people who have not even been to trial yet, which makes possible deprivation of liberty a sensitive issue.…”

Penal changes, crises, and the political economy of punishment: An introduction

“…Although these comparative explorations take crucially into consideration political and institutional factors (see e.g. Wenzelburger, 2020), political economic issues such as types of capitalist economies and welfare arrangements are also pivotal in their analyzes (see also Brandariz, 2019;Sozzo, 2018c).…”