TY - JOUR
T1 - Public opinion on welfare state recalibration in times of austerity
T2 - Evidence from survey experiments
AU - Bremer, Björn
AU - Bürgisser, Reto
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Political Science Association.
PY - 2022/2/3
Y1 - 2022/2/3
N2 - Even though social investment is highly popular, welfare state recalibration remains an uphill battle. When resources are scarce in times of austerity, welfare recalibration involves multidimensional trade-offs. Existing research primarily studied preferences toward individual policies or trade-offs in specific policy fields, failing to capture citizens' overall social policy priorities. Using two novel survey experiments in three European countries, we show that citizens have clear social policy priorities: pensions and education enjoy a high, family policies a medium, and labor market policies a low priority. However, policy constituencies differ in their relative priorities. Our findings suggest that welfare state recalibration is difficult because trade-offs are unpopular, and distributive conflicts in mature welfare states are mainly about distributing resources to specific social groups.
AB - Even though social investment is highly popular, welfare state recalibration remains an uphill battle. When resources are scarce in times of austerity, welfare recalibration involves multidimensional trade-offs. Existing research primarily studied preferences toward individual policies or trade-offs in specific policy fields, failing to capture citizens' overall social policy priorities. Using two novel survey experiments in three European countries, we show that citizens have clear social policy priorities: pensions and education enjoy a high, family policies a medium, and labor market policies a low priority. However, policy constituencies differ in their relative priorities. Our findings suggest that welfare state recalibration is difficult because trade-offs are unpopular, and distributive conflicts in mature welfare states are mainly about distributing resources to specific social groups.
KW - Comparative political economy
KW - austerity
KW - social investment
KW - survey experiment
KW - welfare state
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85123482945&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1017/psrm.2021.78
DO - 10.1017/psrm.2021.78
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85123482945
SN - 2049-8470
VL - 11
SP - 34
EP - 52
JO - Political Science Research and Methods
JF - Political Science Research and Methods
IS - 1
ER -