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Did the financial and economic crisis (2008/2009) induce a permanent shift to more economic intervention in the advanced democracies? Three relevant theoretical perspectives are considered. First, the crisis could have led all governments to intervene more, irrespective of their partisan composition. Second, voter demand could have shifted towards more intervention due to the crisis, again inducing all governments to expand economic intervention. Third, increasing salience of economic issues could have led to an accentuation of partisan differences in economic policy which should have led to an expansion of economic intervention under left governments only. We present data from a new index of economic intervention, which show that governments increased economic intervention during the immediate crisis but returned to liberalization afterward. Similarly, statistical analyses show that partisan differences disappear during the acute crisis but return thereafter. Hence, the financial and economic crisis did not constitute a game‐changer in economic policymaking in advanced democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Did electoral competition shape the policies of the fourth Merkel government? We answer this question in five steps. First, we theoretically discuss under which conditions electoral competition affects public policies. Only in publicly salient issue areas in which opposition parties advocate credible alternatives and only if policy satisfaction influences voting intention will the government modify its policies. Next, we identify the two most salient issue areas, climate change and the Corona pandemic. Third, opposition parties offered credible alternatives, the Greens (and the Left) in climate policy and the FDP (and the AfD) regarding Corona management. Fourth, governing parties could not be certain to participate in the next government. Furthermore, voting intention for the Christian democrats as leading party of the government was related to policy success, while the Greens (and the Left) and the FDP (and the AfD) could benefit from dissatisfaction with climate change policy and Corona management, respectively. Finally, only regarding climate change did the government respond to electoral pressure by an increase in press releases, while communication about Corona was driven by voters' problem perception. These findings are corroborated by brief case studies of policy-making processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue first describes the cumbersome process of forming the fourth and final Merkel government. Both coalition partners experienced severe electoral losses in 2017 and were not particularly close to one another programmatically. This made the formation of a new coalition difficult. Next, the to-do-list is discussed. It turns out that, as a response to the Fridays-for-Future protests, voters considered climate change to be the most important problem in 2019, while the Corona pandemic dominated the agenda from early 2020. Interestingly, none of the coalition parties 'owned' either of these issues and this could have made policy-making even more intricate. In the third part, we summarise the policy profile of the fourth Merkel government, based mostly on the contributions to this special issue. It turns out that the policies of the fourth Merkel government mirrored those of its predecessor. In the socio-economic dimension a gentle de-liberalisation continued, while the policies on the social dimension followed a moderately liberal path. In the final section, the plan of the special issue is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]