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The different trajectories of Britain, France, and Germany cannot be understood without reference to the substantive content and interactive processes of their discourses of policy construction and legitimization. The sustainability of Britain's early, radical move to neo‐liberal policies and more market capitalist practices has much to do with political actors’ transformative, communicative discourse that convinced the public that change was both necessary and appropriate in monetary policy, industrial policy, labour policy, as well as in the social assistance areas of social policy. France's later, more moderate neo‐liberal policies and its radical transformation of state capitalism owe much to political actors’ communicative discourse that was convincing on the necessity of reform in monetary and industrial policy arenas, but was unable to speak to the appropriateness of reform in social policy until the late 1990s. Finally, Germany's long delay on reform of its economic policies as well as of its managed capitalist practices are in part the result of the difficulties of generating a coordinative discourse capable of building agreement among policy actors on either the necessity or appropriateness of reform of the ‘social market economy’, in particular with regard to social and labour policy change.

The French institutional context did not provide incentives for party cooperation, at least not between parties of the left and right camps. Similar to their British counterparts, French parties were unable to reach a consensus on the introduction of state funding in the late 1970s on account of their preference for vote-seeking strategies. The introduction of comprehensive state funding between 1988 and 1994 can be led back to two reasons. Firstly, the cohabitation which, as an exception to the bipolar institutional logic of the French polity, created incentives for cooperation across the ideological blocs. Secondly (and more importantly), an ever more intensive discourse on political corruption which was not only communicative, that is, led between the parties and the public, but also gained a coordinative element since, in the mid 1980s, all parties started to refer to the positively connoted topos of a necessary moralization of political life.

This chapter shows that, in Germany, it was predominantly institutional veto points and party goals that facilitated the parties' consensus on their state funding that evolved in the early 1960s. As regards the institutional factors, the parties' constitutional status was of particular importance because it allowed the German parties to veto the interests of other actors, namely, the Constitutional Court. The parties were thus free to autonomously opt for a consensus-oriented mode of competition, resulting in reluctance vis-à-vis vote-seeking strategies. As expected in an environment shaped by influential veto points and an aversion towards vote-seeking strategies, the coordinative discourse on political corruption was largely dominated by the political parties and played no independent role in the politics of party funding.

The most important variable facilitating the Swedish parties' consensus on state funding was the constitutional reform of 1970. The constitutional reform strengthened the position of the bourgeois parties since it rendered minority governments (during which the centre-right opposition parties enjoyed more influence both in parliamentary committees and commissions of enquiry) more likely. Furthermore, the constitutional reform was an incentive for the bourgeois parties to cooperate more closely. Put differently, they could adopt an office-seeking strategy, which in turn facilitated a consensus on state funding to political parties. Prior to 1970, the Social Democrats electorally and organizationally dominated to an extent that allowed them to marginalize its competitors in questions of party funding. Exploiting the coordinative discourse on political corruption, the Social Democrats were able to discredit business donations to the bourgeois parties, leaving these no other choice than to agree to state funding.