Why Do Welfare States Persist?

Abstract

The shape and aggregate output of welfare states within many developed democracies have been fairly resilient in the face of profound shifts in their national settings, and with respect to the global environment of the past 20 years. This contrasts with once-widespread predictions of universal retrenchment, and it has broadened debates over trends in social policymaking to focus on the phenomenon of welfare state persistence. Research on persistence has not, to date, directly considered the possibility that welfare states survive because of enduring popular support. Building from recent welfare state theory and the emerging literature on policy responsiveness, we consider the possibility that mass public opinion-citizens' aggregate policy preferences-are a factor behind welfare state persistence. We analyze a new country-level data set, controlling for established sources of welfare state development, and buttressing estimates by testing for endogeneity with respect to policy preferences. We find evidence that the temporal distribution of policy preferences has contributed to persistence tendencies in a number of welfare states. We discuss results in conclusion, suggesting the utility of further consideration of linkages between mass opinion and social policy in cross-national perspective.

The Electoral Effects of General Strikes in Western Europe

“…Some studies find that welfare state resilience can be attributed to its widespread public appeal. 16 Voters' dissatisfaction with welfare state reform can be a determining factor for their political orientations and behavior; such dissatisfaction may hamper the likelihood of governments retaining their power in the event that they engage in retrenchment. 17 Other studies find that electorates reward governments for increasing spending, 18 although much of this literature emphasizes the myopic nature of voters, who are more likely to reward recent policy benefits and penalize recent policy blunders.…”

Politics of Risk-taking : Welfare State Reform in Advanced Democracies

“…Governments find themselves in a difficult position when it comes to such unpopular reform in the current era of 'permanent austerity' (Pierson 2001a), being trapped between the '(...) Scylla of economic mismanagement and the Charybdis of dismantling the welfare state' (Hemerijck & Schludi 2000: 129; see also Green-Pedersen 2001a). Governments may lose votes if they curtail the welfare state because of the welfare state's broad electoral popularity and the consequent unpopularity of cutbacks (Esping-Andersen 1996a; Boeri, Börsch-Supan & Tabellini 2001;Becker 2005;Brooks & Manza 2006;see Pierson 1996;Kitschelt 2001). 4 However, governments may also lose votes as a consequence of economic mismanagement as the economic voting literature shows that citizens (at least partially) blame their government for a weak economic performance (see e.g.…”

Measuring and Promoting Wellbeing

“…Public attitudes to income distribution, and public policies in respect of income distribution, are relatively closely related to beliefs about the inherent justice or otherwise of social outcomes (Bénabou and Tirole, 2006;Brooks and Manza, 2006;and Jasso, 1999). They also reflect the public's beliefs about the inherent legitimacy, costs and effectiveness of redistribution (McCall, 2012).…”