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One of the most important arenas for contemporary class politics is the welfare state. In this article, attitudes towards welfare policies among different classes in Sweden are compared with other Western countries and over time. In the first part of the article, attitudes towards state intervention among different classes are compared across four Western countries: Sweden, Germany, Britain and the USA. The data come from the  survey on "The Role of Government" conducted within the International Social Survey Programme. In the second part of the article, more detailed national data sets are used in order to track developments within Sweden from the early  s until  . Attitudes towards welfare spending, financing of welfare policies and service delivery are used to track developments of class differences in attitudes over time. It is concluded (a) that class differences are particularly large in Sweden, and (b) that changes over time indicate stability in overall class differences, combined with changes in attitudes among non-manual employees. The implications of the results for recent arguments about the restructuring of class relations and the impact of welfare policies on stratification are discussed.One of the most important arenas for contemporary class politics is the welfare state. The welfare state redistributes resources and life chances, and regulates risks stemming from market dependency. In this way, it intervenes in various ways in the processes that connect class position with social outcomes. Through social insurance, which safeguards against market dependency, and through financing and delivery of public welfare services, welfare policies change the relation between class, resources and risks.

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The paper analyses how perceptions of government quality – in terms of impartiality and efficiency – impact on attitudes to taxes and social spending. It builds on data from the European Social Survey 2008 from 29 European countries. The paper shows a large degree of congruence between expert-based judgments and the general public's perceptions of the quality of government. It also shows that the quality of government has a clear, independent effect on attitudes to taxes and spending, so that people who perceive institutions as efficient and fair want higher taxes and spending. But government quality also conditions the impact of egalitarianism on attitudes to taxes and spending: in high-quality-of-government egalitarianism has a clearly stronger impact on these attitudes. It is concluded that government quality is an important and so far neglected factor in explaining attitudes to welfare policies.

This paper tests contested arguments within the institutionalist literature about the relation between institutional and attitudinal changes, using the reunified Germany as a case. Eastern Germany constitutes a case approaching a ‘natural experiment’ for the social sciences, being twice the receiver of externally imposed institutions. It, therefore, provides a unique opportunity to closely analyse institutional effects on attitudes, as in this particular case, the time order of institutional and attitudinal changes can actually be decided. Using data from the International Social Survey Program modules on ‘The Role of Government’ (1990, 1996, and 2006), attitudes towards government responsibilities are compared in Eastern and Western Germany, and to other countries. Results show a considerable convergence in attitudes between Eastern and Western Germany – attitudes in Western Germany are completely stable while attitudes in Eastern Germany become, overtime, more similar to those found in the West. Furthermore, comparisons of different birth cohorts show that while considerable attitude differences between Eastern and Western Germany are still found in 2006 among those who had their forming experiences before the fall of the wall, differences are virtually nil among those who were still children in 1989. In summary, the analysis provides strong support for the attitude-forming effects of institutions, and a clear vindication of institutional theories. It also points to generational replacement as a key mechanism in translating institutional change into attitudinal change.