Public Opinion on Welfare State Recalibration in Times of Austerity: Evidence 
from Survey Experiments

Bremer, Björn; Bürgisser, Reto

doi:10.1017/psrm.2021.78

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Public Opinion on Welfare State Recalibration in Times of Austerity: Evidence from Survey Experiments

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Bremer, Björn
Politische Ökonomie, MPI for the Study of Societies, Max Planck Society;

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https://doi.org/10.1017/psrm.2021.78
(Publisher version)

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/7ERIFH
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https://static.cambridge.org/content/id/urn:cambridge.org:id:article:S2049847021000789/resource/name/S2049847021000789sup001.pdf
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Citation

Bremer, B., & Bürgisser, R. (2022). Public Opinion on Welfare State Recalibration in Times of Austerity: Evidence from Survey Experiments. Political Science Research and Methods, (published online February 3). doi:10.1017/psrm.2021.78.

Cite as: https://hdl.handle.net/21.11116/0000-0009-F18D-8

Abstract

Even though social investment is highly popular, welfare state recalibration remains an uphill battle. When resources are scarce in times of austerity, welfare recalibration involves multidimensional trade-offs. Existing research primarily studied preferences toward individual policies or trade-offs in specific policy fields, failing to capture citizens’ overall social policy priorities. Using two novel survey experiments in three European countries, we show that citizens have clear social policy priorities: pensions and education enjoy a high, family policies a medium, and labor market policies a low priority. However, policy constituencies differ in their relative priorities. Our findings suggest that welfare state recalibration is difficult because trade-offs are unpopular, and distributive conflicts in mature welfare states are mainly about distributing resources to specific social groups.