Political parties cannot win elections simply by promising redistribution towards targeted voters: they must also give an account of their ‘growth model’: in other words, how their plans are consistent with economic prosperity. This paper examines how a policy to boost the minimum wage can be framed for consistency with different growth models by right-wing and left-wing parties. It demonstrates that the politics of the minimum wage will be strongly affected by the presence of in-work benefits, and aims to predict the economic and social policy conditions under which a right-wing party will advocate a higher minimum wage than its left-wing counterpart. The argument is developed and illustrated by drawing on episodes when minimum wage adjustment has been debated in several liberal welfare states, selected as cases where governments apparently enjoy flexibility in their choice of growth model due to the lack of systematic producer group influence.
