CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2022
| Author | Goldgisser, Paul |
|---|---|
| Title | The United States and Australias expansion of Unemployment Policies in response to the COVID-19 Pandemic |
| Summary | This paper investigates the major expansion of unemployment benefits in two liberal welfare state regimes. The two countries analyzed are the United States and Australia, both of which had conservative and anti-welfarist majority governments at the time of the passage of their respective programs, and yet saw historically significant increases to their welfare policies. This paper focuses on the role that partisanship, rather than institutions, played in the creation, implementation, and generosity of each country’s response. It does so in the comparative welfare state analysis framework. This paper argues that despite the institutional differences between the two countries, their similar policy responses were due to partisan preferences reacting to the pandemic-related economic crises. It further argues that the large-scale welfare policy expansion in both countries occurred due to the short-term nature of the policies, which the conservative governments pushed for. The paper finds that the institutional differences between the two countries mattered less for their respective policy outcomes than partisan politics, and the short-term expansion of unemployment insurance and wage subsidies was the reason why these new policies were so generous, as conservatives could temporarily expand benefits without risking long-term programme shifts. |
| Supervisor | Folsz, Attila |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2022/goldgisser_paul.pdf |
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