When evaluating the various aspects of the welfare state, people assess some aspects more positively than others. Following a multidimensional approach, this study systematically argues for a framework composed of seven dimensions of the welfare state, which are subject to the opinions of the public. Using confirmatory factor analyses, this conceptual framework of multidimensional welfare attitudes was tested on cross-national data from 22 countries participating in the 2008 European Social Survey. According to our empirical analysis, attitudes towards the welfare state are multidimensional; in general, people are very positive about the welfare state’s goals and range, while simultaneously being critical of its efficiency, effectiveness and policy outcomes. We found that these dimensions relate to each other differently in different countries. Eastern/Southern Europeans combine a positive attitude towards the goals and role of government with a more critical attitude towards the welfare state’s efficiency and policy outcomes. In contrast, Western/Northern Europeans’ attitudes towards the various welfare state dimensions are based partly on a fundamentally positive or negative stance towards the welfare state.

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The idea of a universal basic income (BI) is both radical and simple. Obtaining a sufficient citizenship-based income without work obligations is fundamentally opposing the foundations of the welfare systems that are in place nowadays. As BI has gained increasing attention in public debates and among policymakers, questions arise about its social legitimacy. This study is the first to analyse a broad range of explanatory individual and contextual factors that may affect popular support for BI. In addition, we study how BI support is related to support of current welfare provisions, to analyse how radically different people perceive a BI to be. We use a unique survey question – available for 23 European countries, from the recent release of the European Social Survey (2016) –that introduces BI with an extended definition, emphasizing its universal and unconditional character and that it will replace other benefits and services and is paid for by taxes. Results show relatively high, but varying levels of support among European countries and social groups. People who are in a more vulnerable socio-economic position support BI more, as well as political left-wingers, egalitarianists and people who support targeting benefits at the poor. Also, a BI is more supported in countries with higher levels of material deprivation. This pattern of relations on both the individual and contextual levels seems to suggest that it is not the universal character or its unconditionality that makes a BI so attractive to a large share of the European population, but the fact that it provides (poor) people with a guaranteed minimum income. We also find that people who support other welfare reforms are more supportive of a BI. This, and the fact that younger people are more pro-BI might give hope to BI advocates who present the proposal as a social system of the future.

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A steadily growing number of studies investigate how popular support for social policies targeting particular groups is rooted in citizens' deservingness opinions. According to theory, people fall back on five criteria -Control, Attitude, Reciprocity, Identity and Need (CARIN) -to distinguish the deserving from the undeserving. Deservingness opinions are assumed to be important predictors of support for particular welfare arrangements. A striking feature of this emerging research, however, is that there is no agreed-upon strategy to measure deservingness. Most previous studies rely on proxy-variables rather than measuring the actual deservingness criteria. Deservingness functions as a heuristic rather than as a measured concept, which leads to conceptual confusion. To remedy this shortcoming, this contribution proposes and validates a new instrument -the CARIN deservingness principles scale-that captures the five basic deservingness principles. We analyse data from the Belgian National Election Study by means of structural equation modelling (SEM) to (1) test the dimensionality, validity and reliability of the scale, and (2) verify to what extent the five deservingness principles predict specific policy preferences (as a test of construct validity). Our analyses confirm that the five deservingness principles are distinct dimensions that are differently related to social structural variables and have divergent consequences for policy preferences. The finding of theoretically meaningful patterns of differentiated effects illustrates that the CARIN criteria represent distinct logics of social justice, and corroborates that our measurement instrument is capable of tapping into the essence of these criteria.