Economy or culture? How the relative salience of policy dimensions shapes partisan effects on welfare state generosity.

This article examines how the relative salience of economic versus cultural issues in party competition conditions partisan effects on welfare state generosity in 16 Western European countries from 1970 to 2011. It finds that left-wing parties expand welfare benefits, particularly labor market-related programs like unemployment benefits, primarily when economic issues dominate the political agenda; conversely, partisan differences diminish when cultural issues are more salient. The study operationalizes issue salience using weighted party manifesto data and measures government partisanship by the share of left-party cabinet seats, employing regression analyses that reveal significant interaction effects between partisanship and economic issue salience. These findings suggest that traditional partisan theory remains relevant when accounting for the two-dimensional nature of political competition, highlighting the importance of considering both economic and cultural dimensions to understand welfare policy outcomes. The article also calls for further research into how multidimensional party competition influences social policy and other economic policies.