(2018):
Welfare State Reforms Seen from Below - Comparing Public Attitudes and Organized Interests in Britain and Germany.
Cham,
Palgrave Macmillan.
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Welfare State Reform Support from Below: Linking Individual Attitudes and Organised Interests in Europe
Project Directors
Prof. Dr. Katja Möhring,
Prof. Dr. Bernhard Ebbinghaus,
Prof Ph.D. J. Timo Weishaupt
Project Staff
Dr. Elias Naumann
DFG, SFB 884-funded
2010 – 2022
Research question/goal:
Public opinion and “vested” organized interests are seen as major obstacles to changing the status quo of welfare state policies. Radical or far-reaching reforms of welfare states are politically risky for governments, as they have to fear electoral backlash and opposition from influential interest groups. The project “Welfare State Support from Below” seeks to analyze the influence of non-governmental actors and public opinion on public policy making as well as the possible feedback processes of reforms on individual attitudes and collective interest strategies in selected social policy fields (pension and healthcare policies). By comparing three European countries (in particular Germany, France and the United Kingdom) it analyses different institutional welfare state settings and interest intermediation systems in order to show the impact of varying contexts on the political economy of welfare state reform. With regard to the integrated research agenda of the Mannheim Sonderforschungsbereich 884 "Political Economy of Reform", this SFB-Project A6 focuses primarily on individual and corporate actors in major fields of social policy from a comparative perspective.
Current stage:
At the end of the first phase (2010-12) of the SFB-project A6, the research team concluded the empirical bases of the comparative research for pension and health care policies. It concluded the interviews with organized interest representatives across the three countries (Germany, France, and the UK). Comparative analyses on public attitudes were conducted and questionnaires for two waves for the German Internet Panel (GIP) were developed. The project team was successful in acquiring further funding for the second phase of the SFB 884 Political Economy of Reforms (2014-17), which will add the area of labour market policy and further GIP waves.
Publications
Edited Books
Book Chapters
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(2023): Support for the welfare state over the life course: analysing individual attitude change with multiwave panel data. 161-180. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar. More
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(2020): The legitimacy of public pensions in an ageing Europe: Subjective evaluation and political preferences between 2008 and 2016. 159-176. Cheltenham, Edward Elgar. More
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(2017): The Role of Trade Unions in Pension Policy-making and Private Pension Governance in Europe. 206-238. Brussels, Peter Lang. More
Journal Articles
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(2022): Welfare state support during the COVID-19 pandemic: Change and continuity in public attitudes towards social policies in Germany. European Policy Analysis, 8, 3, 297-311. More
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(2021): The COVID-19 pandemic and subjective well-being: longitudinal evidence on satisfaction with work and family. European Societies, 23, suppl. 1, S601-S617. More
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(2021): Anstieg depressiver Symptome bei Jugendlichen und jungen Erwachsenen während des ersten Lockdowns in Deutschland. Bundesgesundheitsblatt, 64, 12, 1533–1540. More
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(2018): Tax Constraints, Social Policy Preferences, and Support for Redistribution. Societies, 8, 3, More
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(2018): Immigration and support for redistribution: survey experiments in three European countries. West European Politics, 41, 1, 80-101 . More
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(2018): Do right-wing parties foster welfare chauvinistic attitudes? A longitudinal study of the 2015 ‘refugee crisis’ in Germany. Electoral Studies, 52, 111-116. More
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(2018): Attitudes towards highly skilled and low-skilled immigration in Europe: A survey experiment in 15 European countries. European Journal of Political Research, 57, 4, 1009-1030. More
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(2017): Population Ageing, the Intergenerational Conflict, and Active Ageing Policies – a Multilevel Study of 27 European Countries. Journal of Population Ageing, 10, 1, 11-23. More
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(2016): Increasing pressures and support for public healthcare in Europe. Health Policy, 120, 6, 698 - 705. More
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(2014): Increasing conflict in times of retrenchment? Attitudes towards healthcare provision in Europe between 1996 and 2002. International Journal of Social Welfare, 23, 3, 276-286. More
Presentations
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(2023): The Future of Social Protection and the Future of the Welfare State in the EU. [High-Level Group Report Launch Event, Brussels, 06/02/2023 - 06/02/2023]. More
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(2022): Public Attitudes towards the Welfare State in Germany and Great Britain: Erosion or rebounding?. [Final Conference Collaborative Research Centre SFB 884, ZEW, Mannheim, 18/05/2022 - 19/05/2022]. More
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(2022): Die Zukunft der Wohlfahrtsstaaten & Rentensysteme in Europa: soziale Sicherung nicht erst im Alter. [Fachtagung "Alterssicherung im internationalen Vergleich und europäische Sozialpolitik", Deutsche Rentenversicherung Bund, Erkner, 20/11/2022 - 20/11/2022]. More
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(2020): COVID‐19 policies in Germany and their social, political, and psychological consequences. [A review of public policy responses to COVID-19 in different parts of Europe, Harvard University, Cambridge, 14/05/2020 - 14/05/2020]. More
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(2013): Not quite united against reforms: Pension reform positions of British, French, and German social groups. [11th Annual ESPAnet conference "Social Policy and Economic Development", Poznan University of Economics, 04/09/2013 - 06/09/2013]. More
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(2012): Welfare state support from below. [19th Conference of Europeanists, Boston, 21/03/2012 - 23/03/2012]. More