Jonas Edlund

Trust in government and welfare regimes: Attitudes to redistribution and financial cheating in the USA and Norway

Claims have been made that national institutions influence public preferences, as well as structuring patterns of social division. This article analyses attitudes to redistribution and financial ch ...

Trust in the Capability of the Welfare State and General Welfare State Support: Sweden 1997-2002

A central component of institutional trust is related to perceptions of state capacity. Claims have been made that if citizens’ experiences with the state tell them that the government is efficacious, fair and trustworthy, then the odds for supporting publicly financed welfare policies are higher compared to a situation when their experiences with government feed feelings of inefficiency, corruption, unfairness and arbitrary discretion. The general question guiding the empirical analysis is the following: Is distrust in institutional capability an important prerequisite for general welfare state support withdrawal? Relying on Swedish nationally representative survey data, this issue is examined using Latent Class Analysis (LCA). Empirical evidence suggests that distrust in the institutional capability of the welfare state has not translated into widespread anti-welfare state sentiments. For some citizens, distrust in the capability of the welfare state is an issue of insufficient resources and they are willing to increase social spending in order to improve social services and benefits. For other citizens, distrust is closely connected with anti-welfare state sentiments. The article discusses the implications of the results for arguments about institutional trust and welfare state support.

The Work-Family Time Squeeze : Conflicting Demands of Paid and Unpaid Work among Working Couples in 29 Countries

The article analyzes work—family balance among working couples in 29 countries using data from ISSP 2002. Arguments derived from theories on family regimes and modernization are tested. The results indicate that respondents can be categorized into three clusters. The first comprises those having a work—family balance; the second, those having an occupational work-overload; and the third, those having a dual work-overload (i.e. those experiencing too strong demands from both work and family responsibilities). Across countries, cluster sizes vary tremendously. The results indicate that the wealth of a country is strongly associated with the likelihood of achieving a balanced work—family situation. Although the overall probability increases with economic wealth, the relative disadvantage for women compared to men persists. The female disadvantage is mainly a higher risk of occupational overload in the rich countries, whereas in poorer countries there is a higher risk of being in a dual work-overload situation. Among the wealthy industrialized democracies, a balanced work—family situation is more common in the familialist German-linguistic country grouping, followed by the Nordic countries characterized by de-familialization. Market-oriented countries perform less well. Within the perspective of the theory on family regimes, the similarity between the familialist and the de-familialist regimes is an unexpected result.

Attitudes towards Taxation: Ignorant and Incoherent?

The point of departure for this paper is US evidence claiming that citizens do not possess an adequate understanding of the concept of progressive taxation. Using the format of standard survey questions, most respondents preferred progressive taxes. When faced with similar questions framed in concrete terms, a majority rejected progressive taxes. By analysing data from Sweden, it is shown that irrespective of whether abstract or concrete measures are applied, most citizens support progressive taxation. There is no evidence indicating that Swedes in general do not understand the concept of progressive taxation. To explain why US citizens are more ignorant about progressive taxation than Swedish citizens, it is suggested that the Swedish welfare state institutions and the surrounding political environment may be exercising a substantially stronger educational influence on the meaning of redistributive concepts.

Attitudes towards tax reform and progressive taxation : Sweden 1991-96

One of the most debated elements of the Social Democratic reform of the Swedish tax system was the lowered income tax rate, which mainly affected the upper tax brackets. An analysis of public attitudes to the tax reform during three time periods reveals that attitudinal patterns are characterized by stability, both on aggregate and individual levels, and by profound social divisions. Support is more prevalent among more affluent social strata and those affiliated with Bourgeoisie parties compared to workers, low- income earners and those with left-wing preferences. Following attitudinal developments in the aftermath of the tax reform, social conflicts - mainly structured along class dimensions - as well as demands for tax progression tended to increase between 1991 and 1996.

Who should work and who should care? Attitudes towards the desirable division of labour between mothers and fathers in five European countries

In this article, we study attitudes towards the gendered division of paid and unpaid work from a comparative perspective. Based on the notion that political institutions are important in structuring individuals’ orientations, five countries with different family policy arrangements are included in the analysis: Denmark, Finland, Germany, Poland and Sweden. Previous comparative attitude research has a strong bias towards public opinion about women’s employment, while research on attitudes towards men’s participation in care work is rare. Drawing on data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) 2012, we use latent class analysis to explore public opinion about: (a) how parents should divide the responsibilities of economic provision and unpaid work; and (b) whether and how parents should divide paid parental leave between them. The strongest support for a traditional organization of work and care is found in Poland, while the strongest support for an equal sharing of work and care responsibilities is found in Sweden. Among the Nordic countries, results differ. While those holding non-traditional ideals in Denmark and Finland emphasize the importance of full-time work for both parents, non-traditional Swedes instead emphasize that both parents should cut back their work hours and thereby share the responsibility for earning and caring in the family.

Public attitudes towards taxation : Sweden 1981-1997

Claims have been raised from different perspectives that the welfare state suffers from eroding public support. From an examination of public attitudes towards taxation in Sweden by utilising surve ...

Class and work autonomy in 21 countries : A question of production regime or power resources?

Autonomy, or the extent to which employees can control their own work, is a central theme in debates on organizational flexibility and labour market stratification. Predictions of upskilling and autonomy, for manual workers too, have been a striking component in visions of post-Fordism and post-industrialism. The two main comparative labour market theories — the varieties of capitalism school and the power resources approach — suggest that both the level and the distribution of autonomy vary across production contexts, either because of national differences in skill requirements or because of the varying strength of organized labour. The objective of the article, based on the 2004 European Social Survey, is to test these two hypotheses by examining national variation regarding mean levels and class differences in autonomy among 21 countries. The main conclusion is that both mean levels and class differences in autonomy have much more to do with the strength of organized labour than with the skill requirements of production. The analysis also questions a central element of the varieties of capitalism theory, namely the notion of national production strategies based on differences in skill specificity.

The democratic class struggle revisited : the welfare state, social cohesion and political conflict

This paper attempts to resolve scholarly disagreements concerning how class conflicts are manifested in contemporary welfare states. An analytical distinction is made between social (tensions/antagonism between classes) and political (class-based differences in political preferences) manifestations of class conflict. Using International Social Survey Program data (1999/2009) from 20 countries, the results indicate that social conflict is more common in meager welfare states where material inequality is relatively high compared to encompassing highly redistributive welfare states where levels of material inequality are relatively low. When it comes to distributive struggles in the political sphere – political conflict – the pattern is reversed. The results do not support arguments emphasizing that class as an analytical concept is irrelevant for understanding socio-political phenomena in modern industrial democracies. Instead, the results suggest that the character of class conflict varies across national socio-economic contexts in tandem with between-country variation in the institutional setup of the welfare state. The results support Walter Korpi’s theory outlined in The Democratic Class Struggle, which suggests that in modern welfare states, institutionalized political conflict tends to replace less institutionalized and unorganized social conflict. This is more the case in encompassing welfare states than in residual welfare states.

Institutional trust and welfare state support: on the role of trust in market institutions

The importance of institutional trust for structuring welfare state support (WSS) has been advanced by several scholars. Yet, the thesis has not received convincing empirical support. We argue that the weak evidence observed by previous research is caused by the failure of not extending the analytical framework beyond the study of public institutions. Using Sweden as a test case, our analytical framework covers trust in public institutions (TPI) and market institutions (TMI). The main findings are: (1) TMI has a robust negative effect on WSS; (2) the expected relationship between TPI and WSS is strengthened controlling for TMI; (3) TMI mediates the relationships between socio-economic variables and WSS. These findings underline the importance of bringing in other institutional configurations that are seen as conceivable alternatives to the state for administrating social welfare, not the least in studies primarily interested in the link between TPI and support for state-organised welfare.