Christoph Arndt
Biographic Data
| ID | 3731150 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christoph Arndt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christoph |
| FAMILY NAME | Arndt |
| SIGNATURE | ARNDT C |
| AFFILIATIONS | Aarhus University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-9296-2319 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 20 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 171 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 20 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Far-right against green
This article argues that opposition to environmental protection is key to understanding the development of new voting patterns in Western Europe. We theorize climate change as a collective action problem with diffuse benefits and concentrated costs and develop a range of hypotheses about the ways in which concentrated resistance to climate change measures may be channelled into electoral behaviour. We test our hypotheses using data from the Europ…
The centre-periphery divide and attitudes towards climate change measures among Western Europeans
This article focuses on the spatial dimension of environmental protectionism. Merging regional level and European Social Survey (ESS) data, we examine attitudes towards climate change policies in 186 Western European regions comparatively. Findings from multilevel models confirm that climate policies, which concentrate costs spatially, generate resistance from individuals who incur the costs of these policies. Specifically, individuals in rural a…
Is disloyalty rewarded? The electoral consequences of bloc changes of Scandinavian Centre Parties 1977–2019
Centre Parties (Agrarians, Christian Democrats and Liberals) used to be an established part of the Scandinavian party systems and have often been pivotal for government formation. With ongoing individualisation, secularisation, decline of traditional cleavages, and the rise of new ones such as immigration, as well as polarisation, these parties face the challenge of losing representation in parliament as already happened to the Danish Centre Demo…
Voters' wrath? Policy change and government popularity
Recent research suggests that voters are bad at responding in a meaningful way to policy events when deciding for whom to vote. Voters rely on so‐called “blind retrospection”, punishing governments for events outside politicians' control. However, another core aspect of the blind retrospection perspective has not been put to the test: are voters unable to respond to policy decisions that clearly are under the politicians' control? We construct a …
Risky Business? Welfare State Reforms and Government Support in Britain and Denmark
Are welfare state reforms electorally dangerous for governments? Political scientists have only recently begun to study this seemingly simple question, and existing work still suffers from two shortcomings. First, it has never tested the reform–vote link with data on actual legislative decisions for enough points in time to allow robust statistical tests. Secondly, it has failed to take into account the many expansionary reforms that have occurre…
How governments strategically time welfare state reform legislation
Building on studies on the political business cycle, the literature on welfare state retrenchment has argued that governments which cut the welfare state try to avoid blame by implementing painful measures in the beginning of the mandate and expanding benefits as elections approach. In contrast to this linear relationship, this article argues that governments often feel pressured to fulfil (mostly expansionary) campaign promises during the first …
Ethnicity Coding Revisited
Ethnicity coding means that threat‐based views of ethnic minority members spur opposition to specific welfare programmes. To advance knowledge of the influence of political parties on ethnicity coding, we apply a dynamic approach. Longitudinal analyses show that: a) because right‐wing political parties persistently frame state pensions as benefitting native majority members, a perceived ethnic threat increases support for this welfare scheme, and…
An Empirical Model of Issue Evolution and Partisan Realignment in a Multiparty System
Since Carmines and Stimson’s seminal work, the concept of issue evolution has become a common theoretical toolkit to examine and explain polarization around cultural issues and partisan realignment in the United States. However, very few studies outside the United States have applied the concept of issue evolution to explain electoral change and realignment around new issues at national elections over time. Analyzing whether and how Carmines and …
White-Collar Unions and Attitudes towards Income Inequality, Redistribution, and State-Market Relations
The role of trade unions for public policy, public policy outcomes, and political behaviour is a well-studied topic. A serious shortcoming in this literature is that unions are usually treated as unitary actors. This is striking since not least the Scandinavian countries saw the membership growth in independent white-collar unions and their federations at the expense of the traditional blue-collar (and thus textbook-style) union federations. The …
Policy instruments and welfare state reform
A core, but so far untested, proposition of the new politics perspective, originally introduced by Paul Pierson, is that welfare state cutbacks will be implemented using so-called ‘invisible’ policy instruments, for example, a change in indexation rules. Expansion should, by implication, mainly happen using ‘visible’ policy instruments, for example, a change in nominal benefits. We have coded 1030 legislative reforms of old-age pensions and unemp…
Public policy-making and risk profiles
Recent theoretical advances in the welfare state literature have outlined the differences between labour market- and life course-related schemes as centre-right parties have difficulties in enacting retrenchment on life course-related schemes because these concern every voter. In contrast, the textbook risk profile of centre-right parties’ electorates allows them to cutback on labour market-related schemes as these parties get negligible support …
Issue evolution and partisan polarization in a European multiparty system
Issue evolution is a well-established theoretical perspective in the analysis of long-term party competition and partisanship in the US. However, this perspective has rarely been used to analyze political elite effects on partisan polarization in European multiparty systems. Consequently, I apply the issue evolution perspective to polarization in a European multiparty system. I find an emergence of cultural issues in Denmark, where mass level pol…
Union members at the polls in diverse trade union landscapes
This article investigates to what extent social democratic parties still benefit from the support of union members at the polls. Not only are social democratic parties confronted with new competitors in the party systems, but also the union confederations of the socialist labour movement are in some countries losing their dominant position due to the rise of separate professional confederations. It is argued in the article that the effect of unio…
Social democracy after the Third Way
Given the ill-fated political experience with the Third Way, one would not expect social democratic parties that return to office after long opposition spells to take up again the liberal, supply-side oriented policies that were so typical for the Third Way. A case study of Denmark, however, shows that that is precisely what happens and that it has the same disastrous electoral consequences. Taking a comparative perspective and learning from the …
Beating Social Democracy on Its Own Turf
Recent elections yielded sweeping majorities for the centre‐right in Scandinavia with a decade of pure centre‐right majorities in Denmark and the longest sitting centre‐right coalition in Sweden for decades. This is a blind spot in the issue voting literature, which would not expect centre‐right parties to flourish in contexts where welfare issues have a natural salience as in the case of universal welfare states. In contrast, Scandinavian univer…
Social democracy’s mobilization of new constituencies
Social democratic parties have changed their electoral appeals substantially to cater to new voter segments. This article examines social democracy’s fortunes in attracting new voters among the salaried middle class across different electoral systems. Previous research ignored the importance of electoral systems and was inconclusive as to whether social democratic parties succeeded in mobilizing new constituencies. I argue that electoral systems …
The Electoral Consequences of Welfare State Reforms for the Danish Social Democrats
The article demonstrates that the big electoral defeat for Danish social democracy in the 2001 elections was not solely the consequence of the immigration issue, but of the welfare state reforms implemented by the Social Democratic government (1993–2001). Social democratic core voters opposed the reforms since they broke with the decommodification paradigm and turned away from social democracy. Against the arguments from the literature, the left-…
The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms
In all advanced Western nations, policy-makers have implemented encompassing welfare state reforms in recent decades breaking with past welfare arrangements. In particular, social democracy engaged in significant policy change under the Third Way paradigm and broke with its traditional reputation on welfare that had built the ties with the core constituency in the 20th century. The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms: Social…
The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms
In all advanced Western nations, policy-makers have implemented encompassing welfare state reforms in recent decades breaking with past welfare arrangements. In particular, social democracy engaged in significant policy change under the Third Way paradigm and broke with its traditional reputation on welfare that had built the ties with the core constituency in the 20th century. The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms: Social…
The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms
In all advanced Western nations, policy-makers have implemented encompassing welfare state reforms in recent decades breaking with past welfare arrangements. In particular, social democracy engaged in significant policy change under the Third Way paradigm and broke with its traditional reputation on welfare that had built the ties with the core constituency in the 20th century. The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms: Social…
Union members at the polls in diverse trade union landscapes
This article investigates to what extent social democratic parties still benefit from the support of union members at the polls. Not only are social democratic parties confronted with new competitors in the party systems, but also the union confederations of the socialist labour movement are in some countries losing their dominant position due to the rise of separate professional confederations. It is argued in the article that the effect of unio…
Risky Business? Welfare State Reforms and Government Support in Britain and Denmark
Are welfare state reforms electorally dangerous for governments? Political scientists have only recently begun to study this seemingly simple question, and existing work still suffers from two shortcomings. First, it has never tested the reform–vote link with data on actual legislative decisions for enough points in time to allow robust statistical tests. Secondly, it has failed to take into account the many expansionary reforms that have occurre…
Policy instruments and welfare state reform
A core, but so far untested, proposition of the new politics perspective, originally introduced by Paul Pierson, is that welfare state cutbacks will be implemented using so-called ‘invisible’ policy instruments, for example, a change in indexation rules. Expansion should, by implication, mainly happen using ‘visible’ policy instruments, for example, a change in nominal benefits. We have coded 1030 legislative reforms of old-age pensions and unemp…
How governments strategically time welfare state reform legislation
Building on studies on the political business cycle, the literature on welfare state retrenchment has argued that governments which cut the welfare state try to avoid blame by implementing painful measures in the beginning of the mandate and expanding benefits as elections approach. In contrast to this linear relationship, this article argues that governments often feel pressured to fulfil (mostly expansionary) campaign promises during the first …
Beating Social Democracy on Its Own Turf
Recent elections yielded sweeping majorities for the centre‐right in Scandinavia with a decade of pure centre‐right majorities in Denmark and the longest sitting centre‐right coalition in Sweden for decades. This is a blind spot in the issue voting literature, which would not expect centre‐right parties to flourish in contexts where welfare issues have a natural salience as in the case of universal welfare states. In contrast, Scandinavian univer…
The centre-periphery divide and attitudes towards climate change measures among Western Europeans
This article focuses on the spatial dimension of environmental protectionism. Merging regional level and European Social Survey (ESS) data, we examine attitudes towards climate change policies in 186 Western European regions comparatively. Findings from multilevel models confirm that climate policies, which concentrate costs spatially, generate resistance from individuals who incur the costs of these policies. Specifically, individuals in rural a…
Issue evolution and partisan polarization in a European multiparty system
Issue evolution is a well-established theoretical perspective in the analysis of long-term party competition and partisanship in the US. However, this perspective has rarely been used to analyze political elite effects on partisan polarization in European multiparty systems. Consequently, I apply the issue evolution perspective to polarization in a European multiparty system. I find an emergence of cultural issues in Denmark, where mass level pol…
Social democracy after the Third Way
Given the ill-fated political experience with the Third Way, one would not expect social democratic parties that return to office after long opposition spells to take up again the liberal, supply-side oriented policies that were so typical for the Third Way. A case study of Denmark, however, shows that that is precisely what happens and that it has the same disastrous electoral consequences. Taking a comparative perspective and learning from the …
Social democracy’s mobilization of new constituencies
Social democratic parties have changed their electoral appeals substantially to cater to new voter segments. This article examines social democracy’s fortunes in attracting new voters among the salaried middle class across different electoral systems. Previous research ignored the importance of electoral systems and was inconclusive as to whether social democratic parties succeeded in mobilizing new constituencies. I argue that electoral systems …
Voters' wrath? Policy change and government popularity
Recent research suggests that voters are bad at responding in a meaningful way to policy events when deciding for whom to vote. Voters rely on so‐called “blind retrospection”, punishing governments for events outside politicians' control. However, another core aspect of the blind retrospection perspective has not been put to the test: are voters unable to respond to policy decisions that clearly are under the politicians' control? We construct a …
Ethnicity Coding Revisited
Ethnicity coding means that threat‐based views of ethnic minority members spur opposition to specific welfare programmes. To advance knowledge of the influence of political parties on ethnicity coding, we apply a dynamic approach. Longitudinal analyses show that: a) because right‐wing political parties persistently frame state pensions as benefitting native majority members, a perceived ethnic threat increases support for this welfare scheme, and…
White-Collar Unions and Attitudes towards Income Inequality, Redistribution, and State-Market Relations
The role of trade unions for public policy, public policy outcomes, and political behaviour is a well-studied topic. A serious shortcoming in this literature is that unions are usually treated as unitary actors. This is striking since not least the Scandinavian countries saw the membership growth in independent white-collar unions and their federations at the expense of the traditional blue-collar (and thus textbook-style) union federations. The …
An Empirical Model of Issue Evolution and Partisan Realignment in a Multiparty System
Since Carmines and Stimson’s seminal work, the concept of issue evolution has become a common theoretical toolkit to examine and explain polarization around cultural issues and partisan realignment in the United States. However, very few studies outside the United States have applied the concept of issue evolution to explain electoral change and realignment around new issues at national elections over time. Analyzing whether and how Carmines and …
Public policy-making and risk profiles
Recent theoretical advances in the welfare state literature have outlined the differences between labour market- and life course-related schemes as centre-right parties have difficulties in enacting retrenchment on life course-related schemes because these concern every voter. In contrast, the textbook risk profile of centre-right parties’ electorates allows them to cutback on labour market-related schemes as these parties get negligible support …
The Electoral Consequences of Welfare State Reforms for the Danish Social Democrats
The article demonstrates that the big electoral defeat for Danish social democracy in the 2001 elections was not solely the consequence of the immigration issue, but of the welfare state reforms implemented by the Social Democratic government (1993–2001). Social democratic core voters opposed the reforms since they broke with the decommodification paradigm and turned away from social democracy. Against the arguments from the literature, the left-…
The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms
In all advanced Western nations, policy-makers have implemented encompassing welfare state reforms in recent decades breaking with past welfare arrangements. In particular, social democracy engaged in significant policy change under the Third Way paradigm and broke with its traditional reputation on welfare that had built the ties with the core constituency in the 20th century. The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms: Social…
The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms
In all advanced Western nations, policy-makers have implemented encompassing welfare state reforms in recent decades breaking with past welfare arrangements. In particular, social democracy engaged in significant policy change under the Third Way paradigm and broke with its traditional reputation on welfare that had built the ties with the core constituency in the 20th century. The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms: Social…
The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms
In all advanced Western nations, policy-makers have implemented encompassing welfare state reforms in recent decades breaking with past welfare arrangements. In particular, social democracy engaged in significant policy change under the Third Way paradigm and broke with its traditional reputation on welfare that had built the ties with the core constituency in the 20th century. The Electoral Consequences of Third Way Welfare State Reforms: Social…
Beating Social Democracy on Its Own Turf
Recent elections yielded sweeping majorities for the centre‐right in Scandinavia with a decade of pure centre‐right majorities in Denmark and the longest sitting centre‐right coalition in Sweden for decades. This is a blind spot in the issue voting literature, which would not expect centre‐right parties to flourish in contexts where welfare issues have a natural salience as in the case of universal welfare states. In contrast, Scandinavian univer…
Social democracy’s mobilization of new constituencies
Social democratic parties have changed their electoral appeals substantially to cater to new voter segments. This article examines social democracy’s fortunes in attracting new voters among the salaried middle class across different electoral systems. Previous research ignored the importance of electoral systems and was inconclusive as to whether social democratic parties succeeded in mobilizing new constituencies. I argue that electoral systems …
Social democracy after the Third Way
Given the ill-fated political experience with the Third Way, one would not expect social democratic parties that return to office after long opposition spells to take up again the liberal, supply-side oriented policies that were so typical for the Third Way. A case study of Denmark, however, shows that that is precisely what happens and that it has the same disastrous electoral consequences. Taking a comparative perspective and learning from the …
Issue evolution and partisan polarization in a European multiparty system
Issue evolution is a well-established theoretical perspective in the analysis of long-term party competition and partisanship in the US. However, this perspective has rarely been used to analyze political elite effects on partisan polarization in European multiparty systems. Consequently, I apply the issue evolution perspective to polarization in a European multiparty system. I find an emergence of cultural issues in Denmark, where mass level pol…
Union members at the polls in diverse trade union landscapes
This article investigates to what extent social democratic parties still benefit from the support of union members at the polls. Not only are social democratic parties confronted with new competitors in the party systems, but also the union confederations of the socialist labour movement are in some countries losing their dominant position due to the rise of separate professional confederations. It is argued in the article that the effect of unio…
Policy instruments and welfare state reform
A core, but so far untested, proposition of the new politics perspective, originally introduced by Paul Pierson, is that welfare state cutbacks will be implemented using so-called ‘invisible’ policy instruments, for example, a change in indexation rules. Expansion should, by implication, mainly happen using ‘visible’ policy instruments, for example, a change in nominal benefits. We have coded 1030 legislative reforms of old-age pensions and unemp…
Public policy-making and risk profiles
Recent theoretical advances in the welfare state literature have outlined the differences between labour market- and life course-related schemes as centre-right parties have difficulties in enacting retrenchment on life course-related schemes because these concern every voter. In contrast, the textbook risk profile of centre-right parties’ electorates allows them to cutback on labour market-related schemes as these parties get negligible support …
An Empirical Model of Issue Evolution and Partisan Realignment in a Multiparty System
Since Carmines and Stimson’s seminal work, the concept of issue evolution has become a common theoretical toolkit to examine and explain polarization around cultural issues and partisan realignment in the United States. However, very few studies outside the United States have applied the concept of issue evolution to explain electoral change and realignment around new issues at national elections over time. Analyzing whether and how Carmines and …
White-Collar Unions and Attitudes towards Income Inequality, Redistribution, and State-Market Relations
The role of trade unions for public policy, public policy outcomes, and political behaviour is a well-studied topic. A serious shortcoming in this literature is that unions are usually treated as unitary actors. This is striking since not least the Scandinavian countries saw the membership growth in independent white-collar unions and their federations at the expense of the traditional blue-collar (and thus textbook-style) union federations. The …
How governments strategically time welfare state reform legislation
Building on studies on the political business cycle, the literature on welfare state retrenchment has argued that governments which cut the welfare state try to avoid blame by implementing painful measures in the beginning of the mandate and expanding benefits as elections approach. In contrast to this linear relationship, this article argues that governments often feel pressured to fulfil (mostly expansionary) campaign promises during the first …
Ethnicity Coding Revisited
Ethnicity coding means that threat‐based views of ethnic minority members spur opposition to specific welfare programmes. To advance knowledge of the influence of political parties on ethnicity coding, we apply a dynamic approach. Longitudinal analyses show that: a) because right‐wing political parties persistently frame state pensions as benefitting native majority members, a perceived ethnic threat increases support for this welfare scheme, and…
Risky Business? Welfare State Reforms and Government Support in Britain and Denmark
Are welfare state reforms electorally dangerous for governments? Political scientists have only recently begun to study this seemingly simple question, and existing work still suffers from two shortcomings. First, it has never tested the reform–vote link with data on actual legislative decisions for enough points in time to allow robust statistical tests. Secondly, it has failed to take into account the many expansionary reforms that have occurre…
Voters' wrath? Policy change and government popularity
Recent research suggests that voters are bad at responding in a meaningful way to policy events when deciding for whom to vote. Voters rely on so‐called “blind retrospection”, punishing governments for events outside politicians' control. However, another core aspect of the blind retrospection perspective has not been put to the test: are voters unable to respond to policy decisions that clearly are under the politicians' control? We construct a …
Is disloyalty rewarded? The electoral consequences of bloc changes of Scandinavian Centre Parties 1977–2019
Centre Parties (Agrarians, Christian Democrats and Liberals) used to be an established part of the Scandinavian party systems and have often been pivotal for government formation. With ongoing individualisation, secularisation, decline of traditional cleavages, and the rise of new ones such as immigration, as well as polarisation, these parties face the challenge of losing representation in parliament as already happened to the Danish Centre Demo…
The centre-periphery divide and attitudes towards climate change measures among Western Europeans
This article focuses on the spatial dimension of environmental protectionism. Merging regional level and European Social Survey (ESS) data, we examine attitudes towards climate change policies in 186 Western European regions comparatively. Findings from multilevel models confirm that climate policies, which concentrate costs spatially, generate resistance from individuals who incur the costs of these policies. Specifically, individuals in rural a…
Far-right against green
This article argues that opposition to environmental protection is key to understanding the development of new voting patterns in Western Europe. We theorize climate change as a collective action problem with diffuse benefits and concentrated costs and develop a range of hypotheses about the ways in which concentrated resistance to climate change measures may be channelled into electoral behaviour. We test our hypotheses using data from the Europ…
Political science (19 works) · Law (15 works) · Political economy (15 works) · Politics (15 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (14 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (13 works) · Economics (12 works) · Law (11 works) · Welfare (9 works) · Welfare state (9 works)