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What explains different rates of positive asylum decisions in Western democracies? Legislators and bureaucrats respond to public preferences on immigration, though studies have not accounted for salience amplifying preferences. Using autoregressive models, I find relationships between salience, preferences, and asylum recognition rates in Germany and the UK, indicating that asylum administration responds to public opinion. High salience and more open immigration preferences are associated with increased asylum recognition rates in Germany, while lower rates in the UK follow high salience and restrictive preferences. Applications rejected under these adverse conditions precede increases in successful appeals, suggesting political pressure or their own preferences lead bureaucratic actors to reduce rates in the UK. These results do not support lobbying or a culture of disbelief as influences on immigration policies. Rather, they raise questions about Western democracies' adherence to an international rules-based asylum system and highlight mechanisms by which policy responds to public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a comparative study of the labour market and social policy measures introduced in light of the COVID-19 crisis in Denmark, France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom between March 2020 and January 2021. Its main aim is to understand whether the crisis response has changed the structures of the welfare states concerned. Focusing in particular on the differences regarding the crisis measures taken for individuals in 'standard employment' and 'non-standard workers' in each country, it argues that, although extensive temporary protection instruments were introduced for both groups during the crisis, these did not lead to an immediate convergence as regards these groups' social protection. Rather than changing the underlying structures of welfare systems, many of the measures in fact highlighted the specific vulnerabilities of large segments of Europe's labour markets. States have, however, granted social compensation at unprecedented levels, which could result in improved infrastructures and a clearer understanding of the responsibility of the welfare state in future emergencies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article advances international comparative regulatory scholarship on the implementation of nudge-style risk rating systems that are used to empower the public to make 'right' choices for their health, safety or security and help shape regulatee behaviour. Little attention, however, has been paid to the policy question of the extent to which the international introduction of such approaches and the form that they take, is dependent on the institutional contexts of regulation in different countries. Drawing on 55 key informant interviews and extensive policy document analysis, we examine starkly contrasting attempts to introduce 'food hygiene barometers' in the UK and Germany, having been successfully introduced in the former, but abandoned in the latter. This outcome can partly be explained by the stronger sectoral organisation of food businesses and the number of policy veto points they can exploit in Germany compared to the UK. More significantly, however, the study identifies strong institutional contrasts between the two countries; both in the way they balance rights to consumer information, public health and economic activity as well as the extent to which ideas of consumer sovereignty can be instrumentalised for regulatory purposes. The article concludes by pointing to how the form, purposes or even the very possibility of nudge-style public policy interventions are likely to vary from country to country, depending on their fit with the conceits and character of nationally-specific regulatory philosophies, constitutional and legal norms, and juridical ideas about consumer sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]