This article employs multilevel modeling to assess the importance of income inequality on the demand for redistribution in a sample of 22 European countries. According to standard political economy models of redistribution – notably the Meltzer‐Richard model – inequality and demand for redistribution should be positively linked. However, existing empirical research has disputed this claim. The main advantages of this article is that demand for redistribution is measured at the individual level, and that the relevant interaction between inequality and own income is considered. The main findings are that inequality is positively associated with demand for redistribution, and that the median income person is sensitive to the level of inequality. These findings are robust to the inclusion of a range of relevant control variables. The results are relevant in relation to the increase in inequalities in many European countries, and especially relevant to the current debate about the importance of directly observable differences in public preferences for social policy outcomes.

This article relies on data from the 2005–09 World Values Survey to examine individual and cross-national variation in perception of the seriousness of global warming. The data show that a large majority of the public in all countries are concerned about the problem of global warming and that this assessment is part of a broader concern for global environmental issues. The widespread concern implies that global warming has the potential to generate mass political participation and demand for political action. Motivated by a value-based approach to the study of public opinion, the article shows that perception of the seriousness of the problem is positively correlated with high education, post-materialism, and a leftist position on the left–right scale. In addition, religious beliefs are important, suggesting that there is some diversity in the value basis for the issue and that it is not only linked to the ‘new-politics’ perspective. Variation across nations in wealth and CO2 emissions is not significantly related to the publics’ assessments of the problem, and, somewhat counterintuitively, people from countries relatively more exposed to climate-related natural disasters are less concerned about global warming. We suggest possible explanations for the latter finding and discuss our results in relation to the broader literature on environmental change, insecurity, and the potential for conflict.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

SUMMARY To what degree are preferences determined by fundamental and stable value orientations, or are they vulnerable to exogenous shocks to issue saliency? We exploit that the second round of the European Social Survey was conducted around the time when Mohammed Bouyeri murdered Theo van Gogh on 2 November 2004. The murder was covered extensively across Europe and led to a debate about the impact of mass immigration. We consider the murder as a natural experiment which allows us to explore how a shock to issue saliency affects immigration policy preferences. We compare preferences of those interviewed right before the murder (control group) with those interviewed right after the murder (treatment group). We find robust evidence of a significant treatment effect in a pooled analysis with country fixed effects. However, when we allow the treatment effect to vary across countries, we find evidence of more support for restrictive policy in only three countries (Norway, Spain, and Slovakia).

We study the causal effect of personal contact with ethnic minorities on majority members' views on immigration, immigrants' work ethic, and support for lower social assistance benefits to immigrants than to natives. We get exogenous variation in personal contact by randomizing soldiers into different rooms during the basic training period for conscripts in the Norwegian Army's North Brigade. Based on contact theory of majority-minority relations, we spell out why the army can be regarded as an ideal contextual setting for exposure to reduce negative views on minorities. We find a substantive effect of contact on views on immigrants' work ethic, but small and insignificant effects on support for welfare dualism and on views on whether immigration makes Norway a better place to live.

We propose a political reinforcement hypothesis, suggesting that rising inequality moves party politics on welfare state issues to the right, strengthening rather than modifying the impact of inequality. We model policy platforms by incorporating ideology and opportunism of party members, and interests and sympathies of voters.If welfare spending is a normal good within income classes, a majority of voters moves rightwards when inequality increases. As a response the left in particular, shift their welfare policy platform towards less generosity. We find support for our arguments using data on the welfare policy platforms of political parties in 22 OECD countries.