Episode 3 - Jane Gingrich. The Transformation of the Left

Transformation of European Politics Podcast

In this episode, I talk to Jane Gingrich who is Associate Professor of Comparative Political Economy at the University of Oxford. Our conversation is about the changing support coalition of social democratic parties, their current electoral crisis and what all of this means for the welfare state. First, we focus on Jane’s 2015 article titled “The decline of the working-class vote, the reconfiguration of the welfare support coalition and consequences for the welfare state” which is co-authored with Silja Häusermann. (https://bit.ly/3bFfX8o) In this article, the authors show that the electoral support coalition for parties of the Left increasingly consists of educated middle class voters and how this affects the politics of the welfare state. The changing preferences of supporters of the Left, however, do not simply mean less redistribution but instead a different type of welfare state. Jane and I will talk about these and other questions in the next 45 minutes. For more information about Jane and her research you can follow her on twitter under at jrgingrich or visit her website https://www.magd.ox.ac.uk/member-of-staff/jane-gingrich/. I hope you enjoy the conversation Political science reading recommendation: Stephanie Mudge. 2018. Leftism Reinvented. https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674971813