Our next guest of speaker series of Institute for Political Science is Philip Rathgeb (University of Edinburgh) with the presentation entitled:

The Social Policies of the Radical Right: A Welfare Regime Approach
 

Abstract
How do radical right parties influence social policy in government? This paper provides a systematic analysis of the policy choices enacted by radical right parties in Continental Europe, Northern Europe, Eastern Europe and the United States. Although these parties display similar ideological features of nativism and authoritarianism, they pursued very different social policies. Drawing on comparative political economy, I attribute the observed variation in policy choices to historically evolved welfare regime differences in the degrees of (1) conservative family relations and (2) social insurance generosity. In welfare state regimes with high levels of conservatism, the radical right pushes for monetary family support in the tradition of the ‘male breadwinner’ model. In welfare state regimes with high levels of social insurance generosity, the radical right defends social insurance entitlements for labour market insiders with long contribution records. In the absence of both of these welfare state features, trade protectionism becomes a functional equivalent of social protection.