Why have some countries embraced “tough on crime” changes in their legal systems while others have either not done so or done so to a more moderate degree? Across Western Europe, many countries have adopted more punitive legal systems. Georg Wenzelburger’s book, The Partisan Politics of Law and Order, is a provocative and compelling account that develops a theoretical framework and offers new evidence to understand why some places have become more punitive than others. Its focus is on how public opinion, political parties, and party systems affect whether countries embrace tougher policies.

There is substantial disagreement about why legal systems become more punitive. One group argues that it is the result of general, often global, pressures such as the rise of neoliberalism or globalization. Others focus on local factors, such as changes in the rate of unemployment, political polarization, and public opinion. It is difficult to make this multidisciplinary and multimethod literature coherent. However, in chapter 1, Wenzelburger provides a cogent framing of the arguments and findings in this literature. He correctly argues that this research has given too little attention to how public opinion, political parties, and party systems affect whether countries embrace tougher policies.

Wenzelburger claims that the most important areas of partisan influence involve agenda setting and decision making. First, in terms of agenda setting, the interaction between competing political parties shapes where they land on law and order issues. If two parties dominate the system, there is a tendency for each party to “outbid” each other. In a multiparty system, if a conservative party moves too far, it risks alienating other parties with which to build a coalition. Smaller parties are also unlikely to have a strong incentive to follow a larger party’s moves. If right-wing populist parties are present, they can pressure mainstream parties to move in an even tougher direction.

Second, Wenzelburger notes that issue competition on law and order need not actually lead to tougher laws. Party manifestos do not translate automatically into political outcomes. Even if a party’s agenda becomes more punitive, institutional constraints can limit its ability to impose it. Parties in power will obviously be more successful than those in opposition. Yet, depending on the political system, conservative parties might need to compromise to build a coalition. A party might not be in power long enough to enact tougher laws. Likewise, if the constitutional court has strong protections for civil liberties, then tough laws might not pass, be watered down, or be overturned.

Third, Wenzelburger hypothesizes that positive and negative policy feedback can play an important role. Negative feedback would occur if harsher policies initiate a reaction from the public, who then demand a return to softer policies. Positive feedback would occur if tougher law and order policies become locked in, even if public opinion softens. Government elites, interest groups, and the public might each have an incentive to propagate tougher laws because of information feedback or a desire to control resources.

To test this theory, Wenzelburger first looks at the political history of 20 countries in Western Europe over the last 25 years. The author analyzes the content of party manifestos to understand the issue emphasis in party programs. This analysis yields three main conclusions. When the public wants policies that are more punitive, parties tend to move in that direction. Right-wing populist parties also nudge other parties that are the existing issue owners on law and order to become more extreme, but this influence does not affect parties on the Left. Finally, contrary to theoretical expectations, the party system does not seem to explain changing patterns of party emphasis in the data.

Next, the author analyzes law and order spending in countries between 1995 and 2014 to see how things actually changed. He finds that the more that parties emphasize law and order policies, the more the government spends on areas of public order and safety. However, there is also evidence of institutional constraints mitigating this relationship in places with stronger judicial review, greater judicial independence, and a stronger Ministry of Justice. The author then focuses on a subset of these countries—Britain, France, Germany, and Sweden—to code whether each specific piece of legislation goes in a tougher law and order direction. Manifestos that are more punitive do translate into more tough on crime legislation in practice.

From large-N data to case studies, the book then examines the theory with more fine-grained evidence. This approach aims to identify the causal mechanisms that underlie some of the relationships observed in the large-N analysis. In a series of paired comparisons, Wenzelburger looks at conservative governments in the United Kingdom (1997–2007) and Germany (1998–2005), and Social Democratic Parties in France (2002–12) and Sweden (1991–94). The author provides data from 30 semi-structured interviews with key players who were involved in important political positions in these parties.

In chapter 4, Wenzelburger uses process tracing to observe the political dynamics in play. In particular, he compares governments led by Social Democrats in three successive British New Labour governments (1997–2007) and two German governments (1998–2005). In both countries, crime was an increasingly salient issue, and parties shifted their issue emphasis, but the German governments did so to a far less degree. Why? In the United Kingdom, the Labour Party was genuinely committed to harsher laws, parties started to outbid each other, and once in power they faced relatively few veto players. By contrast, in Germany, the coalition between Social Democrats and the Green Party meant that the government was less dedicated to greater severity and more interested in gaining and maintaining power. As a result, there was less of an outbidding phenomenon in Germany. The Ministry of Justice’s ability to comment on proposed legislation also meant that some harsh bills were made softer. Finally, Germany’s Federal Constitutional Court impeded enactment of some tougher laws.

In chapter 5, the book compares law and order policies in conservative governments in Sweden (a four-party, minority coalition government in power from 1991 to 1994) and France (two-party coalitions between 2002 and 2012). Parties in both countries hardened their manifestos and were challenged by right-wing populist parties, but only in France were far-reaching changes adopted. The French case fits the theoretical predictions fairly well, so what happened in Sweden? Wenzelburger offers two main explanations based on a detailed case study. First, the Swedish legislative process is incredibly time intensive. The major law and order changes that the government wished to implement took years to emerge from committee, and the committee demanded substantial revisions. However, by that time, the conservative government had already lost an election and was on its way out of power. Second, the Swedish financial crises of the early 1990s strained budgets and political priorities.

Although compelling throughout, the book does raise several questions. First, Wenzelburger says relatively little about the role of interest groups. He argues that their presence can affect policy feedback and that victim’s groups were important in several countries (pp. 179–81), but little else. In the context of the United States, interest groups seem to play a major role in shaping law and order policy. For example, important work by Joshua Page shows how the California prison guard’s union actively lobbied for tough-on-crime legislation. However, Wenzelburger says little about what types of interest groups are important; where they come from; whether they can prompt policy change (as opposed to only affecting feedback), influence party manifestos, or affect the passage of legislation; and why they vary across countries. Are these lobbying efforts simply less important in Western Europe?

Second, although investigating Western Europe is a refreshing change of pace in this literature, I wondered how well this theoretical framework could apply in systems like the United States, where much of law and order policy is determined at the state and local level. The theoretical framework’s focus on national politics does not seem to map well onto local politics. There is also a tremendous amount of historical and subnational variation in law and order policy in the United States, suggesting that national politics is not the main, or only, story. In a federal system like the United States, how does partisan politics affect law and order?

Finally, the book raises an interesting issue about the use of process tracing in case studies. In some places in the book, Wenzelburger identifies evidence that is inconsistent with his theoretical predictions (for example, pp. 113, 125). However, after further investigation, he is able to explain what caused the outcomes to differ from his expectations (pp. 114–18). In doing so, he better explains each particular case. Process tracing can, indeed, identify causal mechanisms that are often obscured by aggregate, quantitative data. Nevertheless, it raises concerns about whether process tracing is subject to ex-post storytelling or simply renders theories unfalsifiable. If the theory advanced makes claim to external validity, then should we be concerned about adjustments on a case-by-case basis?

In summary, the theory and evidence provided in this book provide an innovative, careful, and systematic study of a topic that has received far too little attention. It should be of broad interest to political scientists because of its insights into how parties choose and implement policies. One of its major contributions is to cut through an often-muddled literature on why governments have adopted harsher laws, and it does so with a parsimonious theoretical framework and compelling evidence. The case studies are a particular highlight because they show how deep knowledge of one’s cases can reveal important insights that are obscured in large-N analysis. In sum, Wenzelburger has produced an innovative and major contribution to our understanding of politics and criminal justice.