Alvariño Vázquez is doing research on how and why polarisation is sometimes replaced with some more consensual ways of doing politics. “We are currently accustomed to ‘partisanship’ or ‘partisan politics’, where parties battle with each other for the defence of opposing ideologies, values, or world visions. Traditionally, in family and the labour market, the left has usually been more supportive of women and labour rights, while the right has incentivised mothers to stay at home to fulfil traditional gender roles,” explains Alvariño.
However, he stresses that there are cases of centre-right parties having introduced policies to support working mothers, in contrast with their historical attachment to the idea of the ‘traditional Christian family’, of male breadwinners, and female homemakers. “Topics of gender, family, and the labour market have become less partisan and more consensual,” specifies the EUI researcher.
So, what prompted some conservative governments to accept more progressive gender roles? Under which conditions do right-wing parties accept the establishment of new social rights they once opposed? Alvariño’s research aims to answer to these questions.
“My main argument is that this happens through the successful activity of progressive forces,” he clarifies, adding that “new social rights, like female suffrage or the abolition of slavery, are initially established through political conflict, where the advocates for those rights confront the opponents defending the status quo. However, once these new rights are established, they solidify in society and become part of the ‘common sense’, resistant to even belligerent or extreme governments.”
In family policy, Alvariño explains that once families are granted parental leave and childcare rights supporting more egalitarian family models - where mothers have better access to the labour market and fathers assume a bigger share of the care work compared to the past -, several socioeconomic changes occur.
First, voters will not accept a reduction of these rights while employers will value women as human capital in their firms. Second, government officials will realise how these rights benefit employment and economic growth. Finally, social movements will request even more advanced policies. “All of these changes prompt right-wing parties to adapt to these social rights as the new social reality,” explains Alvariño, mentioning his fascination for the phenomenon of right-wing parties going against their ideologies and accepting new rights, as this contrasts with the common view of parties as ideologically coherent entities.
With so many far-right governments in power nowadays, menacing what seems to be consensus on social and civil rights, the EUI researcher believes we should all ask ourselves how we can help protect our rights against turbulent political changes. “While a lot of research focuses on why people vote for far-right parties, I would rather address how social rights can resist even when these parties govern,” he points out.
Alvariño Vázquez worked with fellow EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences researcher Milan Thies on the co-authored article ‘Conviction or consent?: tracing the influence of coalition partners on family policy under centre-right ministers’.
In the article, the EUI researchers analysed two major reforms in European countries: first, the German parental allowance reform of 2006 by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) which reduced the time mothers could be on leave from three years to one, and reserved two months for the father (in heterosexual two-parent couples); and second, the Spanish paternity leave extension from two to five weeks approved by the Partido Popular (PP) in 2017.
Alvariño and Thies noticed that research from other scholars focused only on the centre-right parties leading the governments, examining why they introduced laws that were against their ideological positions and questioning if this was due to electoral strategies or to economic reasons.
Alvariño and Thies applied a different and broader approach, as they considered it misleading to study one party only - even if it was the party that approved the policy. They argue that various political dynamics play a role behind closed doors. In their paper, the EUI researchers reveal that many important policy changes stem from negotiations among parties in coalitions or minority governments. In those governments, support parties have the power to determine the government formation, as well as its survival, which gives them leverage to influence important policy changes, such as the ones analysed in their article. Moreover, ‘bureaucratic continuity’ plays a role, meaning that top civil servants (affiliated to previous governments) may continue to lead policy developments even for ministers with different partisan affiliations.
Alvariño explains that he analysed the Spanish case study, while Thies worked on the German one. The Spanish researcher observes that it might seem surprising that the 2017 Spanish government led by the Partido Popular (PP) approved an extension of paternity leave from two to five weeks. “Even if the PP has been somehow supportive of working mothers, paternity leave incentivises men’s roles in care, which is not a point on the agenda of a right-wing party such as the PP,” specifies Alvariño Vázquez. While previous studies argued that the PP was convinced of the need to extend the paternity leave, Alvariño’s research proves the contrary. He closely analysed the political programme of the Partido Popular and found no evidence of such a change of approach. For his research, he also conducted numerous interviews with politicians, bureaucrats, and activists working in family and gender policy, and read diaries of congress debates and hearings. “It was a great learning experience to do these interviews and read these congress debates. When one gets closer to the perspective of policymakers, one discovers political processes and motivations that cannot be uncovered only by looking at available surveys or macroeconomic data,” the researcher said.
The work done by Alvariño in Spain – and the one by Thies on the German case – allowed the two EUI researchers to uncover that the true stories behind the two parental leave reforms are different than the ones usually told. “Our research shows that the right-wing parties were not convinced of the need for such reforms, but rather consented to the proposals of left or liberal parties,” explained Alvariño. As a proof, the researcher mentioned that neither the PP in Spain nor the CDU in Germany proposed progressive family policies in their electoral campaigns. On the contrary, they promised conservative policies to their voters.
In Spain, he underlined, the innovative family policy proposal was designed by the Socialist Party PSOE almost ten years before. However, it remained frozen during the austerity period. Afterwards, the Partido Popular was pressured to approve the measure by Ciudadanos, a liberal party that supported the PP’s 2017 minority government. This confirms the researchers’ hypothesis that, in coalition and minority governments, small parties can succeed in setting the political agenda. They can also have a prominent role in influencing the party in power to approve reforms that are not fully aligned with its philosophy.
The study of the Spanish reform feeds into Alvariño’s overall doctoral research which focuses on how the activity of left-wing parties in family policies conditions future right-wing governments, shifting right-parties to more progressive policies in gender and the labour market. The co-authored paper is a key piece of this puzzle, since it shows how coalition negotiations play a role in policy changes and how bureaucrats from previous administrations work as ‘transmission belts’ between governments of different colours and influence policy.
In his first paper, Alvariño Vázquez had argued that in countries where the left failed to push for reforms - as in Italy due to political instability, or in Austria due to inter-ministerial compromises - the right has remained in conservative positions, and therefore progress in family policy and gender rights has slowed down. Moving forward, Alvariño’s third paper studies how strong policy implementation spurred and helped feminist organisations to demand more radical parental leave policies achieving the pioneering result of a parental leave of equal time for mothers and fathers. This fosters a more egalitarian division of paid labour and unpaid care tasks between genders.
Sharing his final thoughts on how progressive policies can survive and continue to be implemented even by parties that might oppose them, Alvariño stresses that “the key is bold and efficient policy implementation. When new policy rights are extensively introduced, when a great share of society benefits from these policies, and when the policies generate profound changes in how the economy works and the firms behave, they are very hard to roll back.”
Manuel Alvariño Vázquez is a researcher at the EUI Department of Political and Social Sciences. His thesis title is ‘The Right Family? Partisanship and feedback effects in the comparative politics of work-life balance reform’. He is a team member of the WellSIRe research project, funded by the European Research Council (ERC) and led by EUI Professor Anton Hemerijck. Manuel coordinated the EUI Social Investment Working Group, a hub for seminars and discussions among EUI academics on social investment research, ideas, and policies. To learn more about Manuel Alvariño Vázquez’s research, please visit his website.