Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/198812 
Year of Publication: 
2019
Series/Report no.: 
CESifo Working Paper No. 7452
Publisher: 
Center for Economic Studies and ifo Institute (CESifo), Munich
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-controls - controls 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 dragnet-controls 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 fine-grained policy measures also in other European countries.
Subjects: 
dragnet-controls
government ideology
established parties
populism
Schengen Agreement
European countries
JEL: 
D72
F22
P16
Document Type: 
Working Paper
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