Public opinion and the welfare state: sources, processes, and consequences

Abstract

The legitimacy and resilience of the welfare state rest on sustained public support. This introduction reviews the literature on welfare attitudes and public opinion formation on the welfare state. It organises the discussion of the literature on the formation of public opinion in welfare states around three interrelated dimensions: sources, processes, and consequences. The first dimension, sources, is understood here to encompass individual predispositions and traits as well as contextual factors that anchor citizens to certain stances from which their attitudes develop. Processes instead involve evaluations of welfare institutions – through direct experiences, indirect observations of policy designs and implementation, and interpretations shaped by public discourse – that may reinforce or alter initial stances. Consequences, finally, concern the broader effects of the studied attitudes: shaping individual political behaviour and perceptions of democratic legitimacy, while prevailing public opinion imposes pressure on political actors in their approaches to welfare reform and democratic governance. Recognising these three dimensions provides a lens to clarify the mechanisms and scope conditions underlying opinion formation in welfare states and allows to make suggestions for future studies at a time when the normative foundations and fiscal sustainability of welfare institutions are increasingly contested.