Dragnet-Controls and Government Ideology

Abstract

In many European countries established leftwing and rightwing parties have been threatened by policy convergence and, in turn, new populist parties that offer more polarized platforms. I investigate whether government ideology influences dragnet-controlscontrols of persons conducted by the police without having any suspicion that the controlled person committed a crime. They took effect after the Schengen Agreement in 1995. I propose dragnet-controls to be a prime example of ideology-induced policies implemented by established parties. Dragnet-controls confine citizens' liberties, but may help to detect criminals. Using data from the 16 German states over the period 1995-2017, I show that rightwing governments have been active in implementing dragnet-controls and leftwing governments have denied dragnetcontrols since the mid 1990s. When evaluating how government/party ideology influences individual policies, previous econometric studies ignored initiatives in parliament. My study also considers initiatives in parliament. I conjecture that, since 2015, the rightwing CDU has used initiatives to introduce/extend dragnet-controls to also deal with the upcoming threat of rightwing populism. Future research should examine policy-differences between the established parties regarding more finegrained policy measures also in other European countries.

Do Left-wing Governments Decrease Wage Inequality among Civil Servants? Empirical Evidence from the German States

“…Right-wing governments spent more on universities and somewhat less on primary schools and were more active in introducing tuition fees than left-wing governments (Oberndorfer and Steiner 2007; Potrafke 2011; Kauder and Potrafke 2013). 4 Law and order policies were influenced by government ideology: right-wing governments hired more policemen and used dragnet controls-controls of persons conducted by the police without having any suspicion that the controlled person committed a crime-more often than left-wing governments (Tepe and Vanhuysse 2013;Potrafke 2020). Government ideology influenced the spatial distribution of health-care infrastructure.…”

Immigrants as future voters

“…For immigrant voter allegiance, Schmidtke (2016) observed that in Germany the leftist Social Democratic Party has been the "party of and for immigrants." 10 In a parallel with political support for US sanctuary locations, Potrafke (2019) found that the political ideology of local authorities in Germany influenced whether "dragnet" policies were permitted (policies that allowed law enforcement officers to randomly stop people for questioning). Groenendijk et al (2010) concluded for the Netherlands, in national and local elections, that immigrant voters had "left-wing preferences" (see also Heelsum et al, 2016).…”