Femke Roosma

The multidimensionality of welfare state attitudes : A European cross-national study

When evaluating the various aspects of the welfare state, people assess some aspects more positively than others. Following a multidimensional approach, this study systematically argues for a framework composed of seven dimensions of the welfare state, which are subject to the opinions of the public. Using confirmatory factor analyses, this conceptual framework of multidimensional welfare attitudes was tested on cross-national data from 22 countries participating in the 2008 European Social Survey. According to our empirical analysis, attitudes towards the welfare state are multidimensional; in general, people are very positive about the welfare state’s goals and range, while simultaneously being critical of its efficiency, effectiveness and policy outcomes. We found that these dimensions relate to each other differently in different countries. Eastern/Southern Europeans combine a positive attitude towards the goals and role of government with a more critical attitude towards the welfare state’s efficiency and policy outcomes. In contrast, Western/Northern Europeans’ attitudes towards the various welfare state dimensions are based partly on a fundamentally positive or negative stance towards the welfare state.

The preferred role and perceived performance of the welfare state : European welfare attitudes from a multidimensional perspective

Welfare state support has two core dimensions: attitudes about what the welfare state should do and beliefs about its actual performance. People can combine any position on one dimension with any position on the other, yielding four opinion clusters: people can combine preferences for a relatively strong role of the welfare state with a perception of a relatively low or high welfare state performance; likewise, people preferring a small role of the welfare state can perceive a high or low performing welfare state. We apply Latent Class Factor Analysis to data of 22 European countries from the 2008/9 European Social Survey. We find that each of the four clusters contains a substantial proportion of respondents that differs between welfare regimes. In addition, cluster membership is also related to covariates that measure peoples structural positions and ideological preferences.

The weakest link in welfare state legitimacy: European perceptions of moral and administrative failure in the targeting of social benefits

In the field of welfare attitude research, generally studies examining critical attitudes toward the welfare state are rather limited. However, the existing studies find that people are most negative about the mis-targeting of welfare benefits – that is, people are particularly critical of the high overuse (misuse or fraud) and high underuse (non-take-up) of welfare benefits. This study contributes to the current literature by more extensively analyzing perceptions of the overuse and underuse of welfare benefits by revealing the underlying perceptions of moral failure or failed administrative implementation. We also assess how different individual- and contextual-level factors influence those perceptions. We use data from the European Social Survey 2008/2009 for 25 European countries. We find that instead of representing two manifestations of the same concept of mis-targeting, perceptions of the overuse and underuse of benefits appear to be driven by normative ideas and opinions about the administrative effectiveness of the welfare state. Whereas normative ideas about the overuse of benefits are mainly influenced by people’s political ideology and the selectivity of the redistribution system, ideas about the effectiveness of benefits are mainly influenced by people’s institutional trust, the quality of the welfare state and the economic context. We conclude that critical attitudes toward the welfare state have multiple dimensions and can be both substantive and procedural in nature.

The Social Legitimacy of Targeted Welfare and Welfare Deservingness: Attitudes to Welfare Deservingness

The issue of welfare targeting, regarding the allocation of resources between categories of needs and needy groups, has regained a central position in the social policy debate in many, if not all, European countries. It was central to the juvenile stage of the European welfare state in the first part of the twentieth century, and seemed to have been more or less definitely solved in its mature stage in the prosperous 1960s and 1970s. However, with the economic downturn following the 1979 oil crisis, a restructuring process of Western welfare states began, while in the East the political turmoil of the late 1980s and early 1990s was the starting point for welfare redesign. Since these years, welfare reform has been a constant factor in the ‘silver age’ of the European welfare state (Taylor-Gooby, 2002). Further, there is no foreseeable end to it, because the concept of the welfare state and its physical manifestations in specific social policies became substantially challenged again in the last two decades as a result of intensified international economic competition, a financial crisis, demographic ageing, migration and a ‘refugee crisis’, increasing inequality and the rise of new social risks. This combination of challenges has resulted in a precarious political context marked by intensified discussions about the scope and generosity of the welfare state, which in essence are debates about welfare targeting. More concretely, what we witness in most European welfare states is an intensification of critical debates about the necessity and fairness of redistributive relationships that have been organized through existing welfare arrangements, or that, in view of social and economic challenges, should be organized anew. Debates vary across different social issues: the intensified pension debate concerns the redistribution of welfare between older and