Start Date
4-12-2019 4:00 PM
End Date
4-12-2019 4:15 PM
Description
Welfare chauvinism first appeared in academic literature when Norwegian and Danish political parties began framing immigration as a threat to the social democratic system’s survival; since then, it has become a cornerstone of populist ideology in Europe. A form of quasi-retrenchment, welfare chauvinism has been advanced in Denmark by the Danish People’s Party (DF), which sees immigration as a threat to the welfare state and presents chauvinism as the cure – pursuing one form of retrenchment to “prevent” another. DF’s electoral popularity puts the Social Democratic party (S) between a rock and a hard place, torn between the electoral necessities of accommodating chauvinism and maintaining support for the welfare state. In this paper, I argue that indirect retrenchment is too politically costly an option for S to pursue; instead, it will accommodate DF’s chauvinism by supporting direct retrenchment. I hypothesize that, via votes in the Danish parliament from 2004 to 2019, S has attempted to make it more difficult to obtain citizenship and residency rights (thus making it more difficult to obtain benefits) and make it easier for these rights, and thus the benefits, to be revoked. My findings broadly, but tentatively, support this claim. I also find that S has supported a third form of direct retrenchment: encouraging repatriation of foreigners to their home countries, which would entail a loss of benefits.
Chair
Helen Callaghan
Discussant
Per Andersson & Jens van’t Klooster
Session Type
Panel 4
Topic
Social and Welfare Politics
Putting Up…or Shutting Out? Accommodation of Welfare Chauvinism by Denmark’s Social Democrats
Welfare chauvinism first appeared in academic literature when Norwegian and Danish political parties began framing immigration as a threat to the social democratic system’s survival; since then, it has become a cornerstone of populist ideology in Europe. A form of quasi-retrenchment, welfare chauvinism has been advanced in Denmark by the Danish People’s Party (DF), which sees immigration as a threat to the welfare state and presents chauvinism as the cure – pursuing one form of retrenchment to “prevent” another. DF’s electoral popularity puts the Social Democratic party (S) between a rock and a hard place, torn between the electoral necessities of accommodating chauvinism and maintaining support for the welfare state. In this paper, I argue that indirect retrenchment is too politically costly an option for S to pursue; instead, it will accommodate DF’s chauvinism by supporting direct retrenchment. I hypothesize that, via votes in the Danish parliament from 2004 to 2019, S has attempted to make it more difficult to obtain citizenship and residency rights (thus making it more difficult to obtain benefits) and make it easier for these rights, and thus the benefits, to be revoked. My findings broadly, but tentatively, support this claim. I also find that S has supported a third form of direct retrenchment: encouraging repatriation of foreigners to their home countries, which would entail a loss of benefits.
