Partisanship, state intervention and economic well-being in 13 developed countries, 1980–2000

The comparative political economy of developed countries has often neglected the growing interest in producing well-being indicators that go beyond GDP. This was largely due to lack of reliable and comparable data. In spite of this, Osberg and Sharpe have recently provided a time-series cross-section data set of the Index of Economic Well-Being (IEWB) for selected OECD countries. Accordingly, this article tries to plug the current gap between the comparative political economy and well-being literature by presenting an empirical study about the impact of partisanship and state intervention on the IEWB and its four domains (that is, consumption flows, stocks of wealth, economic equality, economic security). A main lesson can be drawn from the econometric analysis: left cabinets and their favorite policies increase stocks of wealth, economic equality and economic security, rather than consumption flows. This means that leftist governments do not promote the current prosperity of a typical citizen but the future and widespread well-being of most population.