ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author aims to resolve the ambiguities by going beyond both old versus young party system and crude measures of working-class strength to consider the ideological stance and power of two mass-based types of political parties—Left and Catholic. He also aims to integrate political party dominance into his model of democratic corporatism and thereby come closer to an understanding of whether and how political parties influence social policy. The author explores the relative strength of Catholic and left party dominance in explaining variations among nineteen rich democracies in welfare effort measured by social security expenditures as a fraction of the gross national product in 1966 and 1971. To measure left and Catholic party dominance, economists had to determine the position of parties on a scale of leftism or Catholicism, to operationalize the concepts of party power and to decide how to deal with caretaker and nonpartisan governments.
