We examine whether government partisanship shapes the introduction and the leniency of personal bankruptcy regimes in the European Union between 1984 and 2020. Relying on a country–year panel covering 25 member states, we employ a combination of bivariate tests, fixed-effects panel regressions, and discrete-time hazard models. The article provides quantitative evidence that right-wing cabinets are significantly associated with the introduction of personal bankruptcy systems and with leniency-enhancing measures. These associations remain robust across alternative ideology codings and when first enactments are analyzed. However, the statistical significance weakens in the post-2000 period, and it is not statistically confirmed when the analysis is restricted to reforms alone. The dynamics of the relationship also change in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. By extending partisan theories into this area of social policy, our findings suggest that partisan cycles influence both the timing and direction of individual debtor protection, with broader implications for credit markets, filing dynamics, the behavior of over-indebted households, and entrepreneurial risk-taking.
Walter et al. (Mon,) studied this question.