Abstract
This chapter analyzes party positions on higher education policies, particularly tuition fees and subsidies. The literature thus far has largely neglected to study party positions on (higher) education empirically, mainly due to a lack of comparative data. Against this background, I exploit expert survey data on party preferences towards higher education across Europe (Rohrschneider and Whitefield. The strain of representation: How parties represent diverse voters in Western and Eastern Europe. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012) as well as a dataset on party positions in Great Britain over 40 years utilizing party manifestos. The chapter finds, firstly, that parties do hold distinct positions on and do care about higher education finance. Secondly, parties’ higher education policy positions vary by ideology as expected by the Time-Sensitive Partisan Theory. Thirdly, confirming this theory, positive feedback-effects alter party positions on higher education finance.
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Garritzmann, J.L. (2016). What Do Parties Want? Parties’ Positions and Issue Emphasis on Tuition Fees and Subsidies. In: The Political Economy of Higher Education Finance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29913-6_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29913-6_4
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