The Electoral Consequences of Welfare State Reforms for the Danish Social Democrats

Abstract

AbstractThe 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-wing competitor Socialist People’s Party’s could not benefit from the reforms given its function as supporter party. Rather, the reforms caused the realignment of social democratic core voters with the Liberals and the Danish People’s Party having expanded their voter base in 2001 as a consequence of the welfare reforms.