Do Welfare Regimes Shape the Variance in Public Support for Redistribution?

Most studies on the effect of welfare regimes on public support for the welfare state find no systematic relationship between regimes and support. This paper argues that instead of the conventional approach which conceptualizes the effect of welfare regimes on public support by cross-national differences in mean levels of public support, welfare regimes might also shape the variance in welfare state support. To test this hypothesis, the paper measures welfare regimes by a range of country-level variables and uses a multilevel heteroskedastic ordered probit model to estimate the effect of these country-level variables on the variance in support for redistribution. The empirical analysis of 15 OECD countries, which is replicated on three different data sets, shows that there is only mixed evidence to support the hypothesis that welfare regimes shape the variance in public support for redistribution in a systematic way.