Pergamon zyxwvutsrqponmlkjihgfedcbaZYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGF History of European Ideas, Vol. 19, Nos 4-6, pp. 683-689, 1994 Copyright @ 1994 Elsevier Science Ltd Printed in Great Britain. All rights reserved 0191-6599/94 $7.00+ 0.00 ‘END OF IDEOLOGY’ OR ‘POLITICS MATTERS’? TWO COMPETING HYPOTHESES IN THE COMPARATIVE PUBLIC POLICY LITERATURE’ LOUIS M. IMBEAU* The comparative public policy literature has been driven, over the last decades, by two competing hypotheses to which almost every comparative study bearing on policy outputs of industrialised societies has referred. The ‘End of Ideology’ hypothesis, which came to be considered as conventional wisdom, originated in the works of Bell2 and that of Lipset.’ It suggests that ideological differences among governments are not important in shaping policies; rather economic development is the most important determinant of policy outputs. Governments in societies with a comparable level of economic development face the same kind of problems which they address with the same kind of tools. This ‘End of Ideology’ hypothesis is simply a singular case of the more general ‘Conference’ hypothesis according to which the economic dynamic of advanced industrialised states determines social structures and political systems to such a point that there is a convergence among similarly developed nations. The contending hypothesis, the ‘Politics Matters’ hypothesis, rather suggests that even though the level of economic development is a very important determinant of policy outputs, political factors-among which the ideological orientation of governments is the most widely used-help explain a sizeable portion of the variance in policy outputs. Ideologically divergent parties adopt divergent policies when in power. This hypothesis has stimulated the work of many policy analysts who tried to explain variations in policy outputs in cross- national designs. In fact, the greater part of the research effort in comparative public policy has been more or less influenced by this debate. It is our intention in this paper to summarise the findings of this literature with regard to one of the basic questions which the ‘Politics Matters’ hypothesis has posed: is there a relationship between party ideology and policy outputs? Or, to put it another way: do ideologically divergent parties adopt divergent policies when in power? This summary will be based on data collected in a larger research project involving a systematic analysis of the most important empirical works published in scholarly journals and books over the last three decades. DATA AND CASES Our data set consists of 1160 statistical tests on the Ideology-Policy relationship, for which information on 11 characteristics was coded. If we consider the number of tests published as an indication of the interest of *Departement de Science Politique, UniversitCLaval, QuCbec, GlK 7P4, Canada. 683