Important reforms are necessary to adjust today’s welfare states to the challenges of post-industrial knowledge economies.
Public opinion, however, is often sceptical towards reforms whose benefits will accrue only in the future. We analyse the conditions that affect citizens’ support for such future-oriented reforms on the basis of survey experiments from two novel public opinion surveys in nine countries. Our contribution is twofold. First, we show that ‘supply side factors’, referring to characteristics of the reform design itself (its policy field, distributive reform effect, time horizon, and costs) are less relevant in explaining support than ‘demand side factors’ (self-interest, ideological predispositions). Second, we demonstrate that among these ‘demand-side factors’, attitudes on the socio-cultural dimension of political conflict are key to explain support for future-oriented reforms. More generally, we thus highlight the role of ‘second dimension politics’ for welfare state reform.
Julian Garritzmann is Professor of Political Science at the Goethe University Frankfurt. He is a political scientist, working at the intersection of comparative political economy, public policy, and political sociology. Most of his recent work focuses on welfare state research, education and social investment policy, global social policy, party politics, and public opinion. He holds a PhD from the University of Konstanz, Germany. Before joining Frankfurt, he was Senior Researcher at the University of Zurich, Visiting Scholar at Harvard University, Duke University, and at Rutgers, as well as a Max Weber Fellow at the EUI, Florence.
Chris Anderson is Professor of European Politics and Policy at the LSE European Institute.