The mass media, welfare state reforms, and electoral punishment

The question to what extent voters punish governments for cutting the welfare state is an unsettled issue in social policy research. Our contribution addresses this shortcoming by systematically analyzing how media reporting about legislative changes to the welfare state affects the public agenda and citizens’ vote intentions while controlling for the influence of actual cutbacks and expansions. In our analysis we examine the case of Germany from 1994 to 2014; a period where major cutbacks but also significant expansions to the German welfare state occurred. We find that mass media reporting about pension cutbacks is associated with a drop in government approval, whereas the reaction to expansive legislative changes is muted. We also find that the relationship of media reporting and government approval strongly depends on who is in government with the social democrats being punished harder than the Christian democrats.