Welfare State Regimes and Attitudes Towards Redistribution in 15 Western European Countries

In this paper we analyse how different welfare state regimes affect popular support for redistribution across 15 Western European countries. We suggest that the main reasons why previous studies have not been able to connect welfare state regimes and popular attitudes towards the welfare state is due to an improper and reductionist operationalisation of welfare state regimes, failure to distinguish empirical country ‘cases’ from theoretical regime types, and finally improper handling of statistical methodologies. Rather than treating countries as ‘perfect’ representations of different welfare state regimes, in the paper we assess countries’ degree of belonging to welfare state regimes along a range of theoretically defined characteristics: level and composition of public social spending, strength of left-wing political power, and degree of neo-corporatism. Utilising data from the European Social Survey and the third wave of the European Values Study, and by means of an ordered mixed probit model with concomitant variables, we find strong evidence that structural characteristics affect mass opinion in a manner consistent with regime theory. For example, public support for redistribution increases with total social expenditure relative to GDP, family benefits, and active labour market policies. Furthermore, we find that institutionalised left-wing political power as measured by left-wing government seats and neo-corporatism are significant predictors of support for redistribution.