Dragnet-Controls and Government Ideology

38 Pages Posted: 21 Feb 2019

See all articles by Niklas Potrafke

Niklas Potrafke

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) - Ifo Institute

Date Written: 2019

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.

Keywords: dragnet-controls, government ideology, established parties, populism, Schengen Agreement, European countries

JEL Classification: D720, F220, P160

Suggested Citation

Potrafke, Niklas, Dragnet-Controls and Government Ideology (2019). CESifo Working Paper No. 7452, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3338806 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3338806

Niklas Potrafke (Contact Author)

CESifo (Center for Economic Studies and Ifo Institute) - Ifo Institute ( email )

Poschinger Str. 5
Munich, 01069
Germany

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