Whereas some Western democracies have turned toward substantially tougher law and order policies, others have not. How can we account for this discrepancy? In The Partisan Politics of Law and Order, Georg Wenzelburger argues that partisan politics have shaped the development of law and order policies in Western countries over the past twenty-five years. Wenzelburger establishes an integrated framework based on issue competition, institutional context, and policy feedback as the driving factors shaping penal policy. Using a large-scale quantitative analysis of twenty Western industrialized countries covering the period from 1995 to 2012, supplemented by case studies in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Sweden, Wenzelburger presents robust empirical evidence for the central role of political parties in law-and-order policy-making. By demonstrating how the configuration of party systems and institutional context affect law and order policies, this book addresses an understudied but key dynamic in penal legislation. The argument and evidence presented here will be of interest to political scientists, sociologists, criminologists, and criminal justice scholars.

Georg Wenzelburger is Professor for Policy Analysis and Political Economy at the University of Kaiserslautern. He is co-author of Reforming the Welfare State (2020), a large number of articles in peer-reviewed journal articles and multiple books in German.

Preface Chapter One: Introduction to the partisan politics of law and order Chapter Two: A theoretical framework of the partisan politics of law and order Chapter Three: Patterns of law and order policies in 20 Western industrialized countries: A quantitative analysis Chapter Four: Law and order policies and 'Third Way' Social Democrats Chapter Five: Law and order policies and conservative parties Chapter Six: Law and order and the risk of policy overreaction Chapter Seven: The partisan politics of law and order Appendix