Christian Albrekt Larsen

The institutional logic of welfare attitudes: how welfare regimes influence public support

Why are people who live in liberal welfare regimes so reluctant to support welfare policy? And why are people who live in social democratic welfare regimes so keen to support welfare policy? This article seeks to give an institutional account of these cross-national differences. Previous attempts to link institutions and welfare attitudes have not been convincing. The empirical studies have had large difficulties in finding the expected effects from regime-dependent differences in self-interest, class interest, and egalitarian values. This article develops a new theoretical macro—micro link by combining the literature on deservingness criteria and the welfare regime theory. The basic ideas are that three regime characteristics, (a) the degree of universalism in welfare policy, (b) the differences in economic resources between “the bottom” and “the majority,” and (c) the degree of job opportunities, have a profound impact on the public deservingness discussion and thereby on public support for welfare policy.

Municipal Size and Democracy: A Critical Analysis of the Argument of Proximity Based on the Case of Denmark

The Nordic welfare states are based on a unique system of highly decentralized municipalities. However, in Denmark a discussion about merging municipalities has emerged. The discussion has kept within the framework of the classic dichotomy between capacity and proximity, or been limited to considerations of effectiveness versus democracy. The assumptions behind both arguments can be nuanced and problematized, and a new study, based on an extensive set of data, analyses the basic assumptions behind the argument of proximity. In accordance with earlier studies, it finds that participation is higher in small municipalities. However, municipal size does not affect citizens’ interest in and knowledge of local politics. Nor does it affect citizens’ perception of local politicians and their trust in local political decisions. This is surprising, given previous research in this area.

The institutional logic of images of the poor and welfare recipients: A comparative study of British, Swedish and Danish newspapers

The article investigates how the poor and welfare recipients are depicted in British, Danish and Swedish newspapers. The study was inspired by American media studies that have documented a negative stereotypic way of portraying the poor and welfare recipients, especially when they are African Americans. The article argues that there is an institutional welfare regime logic behind the way the poor and welfare recipients are depicted in the mass media. It is not only a matter of race. This argument is substantiated by showing that the poor and welfare recipients are (1) also depicted negatively in a liberal welfare regime, the UK, where most of the poor and welfare recipients are perceived to be white, and (2) depicted positively in two social-democratic welfare regimes, Sweden and Denmark, where the poor and welfare recipients have increasingly come to be perceived as non-white, especially in Denmark. The empirical analyses are based on a sample of 1750 British, 1750 Danish and 1750 Swedish newspapers covering the period from 2004 to 2009.

How three narratives of modernity justify economic inequality

The acceptance of income differences varies across countries. This article suggests belief in three narratives of modernity to account for this: the “tunnel effect,” related to perceptions of generational mobility; the “procedural justice effect,” related to the perceived fairness in the process of getting ahead; and the “middle-class effect,” related to perceptions of the social structure of society. The importance of the suggested narratives is tested by means of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) 2009 module, which includes 38 countries. The finding is that belief in the three narratives can account for a considerable part of the cross-national variation. Beliefs in procedural justice and the existence of a middle-class society clearly go together with high acceptance of current income differences, while the “tunnel effect” is more complex. In general, belief in generational mobility goes together with acceptance of current income differences. But personal experience of such upward social mobility actually lowers acceptance of current income differences, especially if overall generational mobility in society is believed to be backward. The framework explains most country-cases, which points to the existence of general patterns. But the models also indicate that the Philippines, and to a lesser extent the US and France, are special cases.

Structural unemployment. An analysis of recruitment and selection mechanisms based on panel data among Danish long-term unemployed

The perception of structural unemployment – summarised in the notion of ‘Eurosclerosis’– became almost hegemonic during the 1990s. Policy makers all over Europe tried, by means of supply-side policies, to counteract the lack of incentives in the developed European welfare states, the lack of qualification on the post-industrial labour markets and the personal decay due to long-term unemployment. However, based on the critical case of Denmark, this article challenges the perception of structural unemployment and suggests an alternative business cycle/barrier perception. At the macro level it is difficult to explain the Danish decline in unemployment from 1994 to 2000 within the structure perception. The lack of explanatory power of the structure perception is further highlighted in micro-level analyses conducted on a panel study of long-term unemployed. Based on the unemployeds own assessments, we find no indications of supply-side problems. These results are supported by analyses of actual labour market integration of the long-term unemployed in the period between 1994 and 1999, which show that education level and previous unemployment had no noteworthy influence on labour market integration, whereas age had a decisive influence. These surprising results further undermine the perception of structural unemployment and the supply-side policies rooted in this ‘mistaken’ problem definition.

Ambivalent stereotypes link to peace, conflict, and inequality across 38 nations

Significance Stereotypes reflect a society’s inequality and conflict, providing a diagnostic map of intergroup relations. This stereotype map’s fundamental dimensions depict each group’s warmth (friendly, sincere) and competence (capable, skilled). Some societies cluster groups as high on both (positive “us”) vs. low on both (negative “them”). Other societies, including the United States, have us-them clusters but add ambivalent ones (high on one dimension, low on the other). This cross-national study shows peace-conflict predicts ambivalence. Extremely peaceful and conflictual nations both display unambivalent us-them patterns, whereas intermediate peace-conflict predicts high ambivalence. Replicating previous work, higher inequality predicts more ambivalent stereotype clusters. Inequality and intermediate peace-conflict each use ambivalent stereotypes, explaining complicated intergroup relations and maintaining social system stability. A cross-national study, 49 samples in 38 nations (n = 4,344), investigates whether national peace and conflict reflect ambivalent warmth and competence stereotypes: High-conflict societies (Pakistan) may need clearcut, unambivalent group images distinguishing friends from foes. Highly peaceful countries (Denmark) also may need less ambivalence because most groups occupy the shared national identity, with only a few outcasts. Finally, nations with intermediate conflict (United States) may need ambivalence to justify more complex intergroup-system stability. Using the Global Peace Index to measure conflict, a curvilinear (quadratic) relationship between ambivalence and conflict highlights how both extremely peaceful and extremely conflictual countries display lower stereotype ambivalence, whereas countries intermediate on peace-conflict present higher ambivalence. These data also replicated a linear inequality–ambivalence relationship.

The Myth of Unadaptable Gender Roles: Attitudes towards Women’s Paid Work among Immigrants across 30 European countries

It is a predominant assumption in contemporary political and academic debates that gender roles and attitudes supporting women’s paid work among immigrants are deep-rooted and stable over time. However, the actual work–family orientations among immigrants are rarely studied. The purpose of this article is to study to what extent and at what pace immigrants in general adapt to the attitudes towards women’s paid work that prevail in the host countries. A cross-national research strategy is applied using the European Social Survey rounds 2 (2004), 4 (2008) and 5 (2010), allowing us to compare and analyse attitudes towards women’s paid work among 13,535 foreign-born individuals resident in 30 European countries. The results indicate that immigrants’ attitudes towards women’s paid work are highly structured by the institutional and cultural context of the host country. Both male and female immigrants, as well as immigrants with and without children, adapt to host country attitudes at a high pace.

3D reconstruction of buildings with automatic facade refinement

3D reconstruction and texturing of buildings have a large number of applications and have therefore been the focus of much attention in recent years. One aspect that is still lacking, however, is a way to reconstruct recessed features such as windows and doors. These may have little value when seen from a frontal viewpoint. But when the reconstructed model is rotated and zoomed the lack of details will leap out. In this work we therefore aim at reconstructing a 3D model with refined details. To this end we apply a structure from motion approach based on bottom up bundle adjustment to first estimate a 3D point cloud of a building. Next, a rectified texture of the facade is extracted and analyzed in order to detect recessed features and their depths, and enhance the 3D model accordingly. For evaluation we apply the method to a number of different buildings.

Education and Trust: Exploring the Association across Social Relationships and Nations

Contemporary research on trust has come to assume that education has a universal positive effect on trust. Using the survey item that has dominated the trust literature –‘whether one believes most people can be trusted or one can never be too careful’ – education is often found to be one of the strongest predictors of trust, more important than age, income, wealth, health or any another individual characteristic. Thus there are indeed reasons to believe that education sometimes increases the propensity to trust other people. However, this article argues that there are limits to the positive effect derived from education. Using the fifth wave of the World Values Survey, it is demonstrated that there is no positive effect from education on trust within the family, among friends or among persons living in one’s neighbourhood. In the latter case, a negative effect is found. It is also demonstrated that the positive effect on ‘generalized trust’ is largely a phenomenon found in low-corruption countries. The article demonstrates that in high-corruption countries, education decreases trust in other people – both generalized trust and trust in more proximate relationships.

European Welfare Nationalism: A Democratic Forum Study in Five Countries

Immigrants’ entitlement to social rights emerges as a major issue in the UK, Germany, Norway and Denmark, but the question of how to attract highly qualified labour dominates discussion in Slovenia. When it comes to justifying nationalist attitudes, it is only in the UK that people are willing to openly cite self-interest in competition for jobs, housing and school places as a reason. Elsewhere the issue is one of effective integration. Concerns about economic impact are most prominent in the UK—where people see immigrants primarily as a burden—in Denmark and Norway—where they are seen as, on balance, an economic benefit—and in Slovenia, where the main concern is to attract higher skilled immigrants. In Germany the debate is more about retaining an authentic national culture. Tensions over immigration are real but in most countries resoluble.