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The (ir)relevance of unemployment for labour market policy attitudes and welfare state attitudes: THE (IR)RELEVANCE OF UNEMPLOYMENT
Abstract
Typically, associations between being unemployed and policy attitudes are explained with reference to economic self‐interest considerations of the unemployed. Preferences for labour market policies (LMP) and egalitarian preferences are the prime example and the focus of this study. Its aim is to challenge this causal self‐interest argument: self‐interest consistent associations of unemployment with policy preferences are neither necessarily driven by self‐interest nor necessarily causal. To that end, this article first confronts the self‐interest argument with a broader perspective on attitudes. Given that predispositions (e.g., value orientations) are stable and influence more specific policy attitudes, it is at least questionable whether people change their policy attitudes simply because they get laid off. Second, the article derives a non‐causal argument behind associations between unemployment and policy attitudes, arguing that these might be spurious associations driven by individuals’ socioeconomic background. After all, the entire socioeconomic background of a person is simultaneously related to both the risk of getting unemployed (‘selection into unemployment’) and distinct political socialisation experiences from early childhood onwards. Third, this article uses methods inspired by a counterfactual account on causality to test the non‐causal claims. Analyses are carried out using the fourth wave of the European Social Survey and applying entropy balancing to control for selection bias. In only two of the 31 analysed countries do unemployment effects on egalitarian orientations remain significant after controlling for selection bias. The same holds for effects on active LMP attitudes with the exception of six countries. Attitudes towards passive LMP are to some degree an exception since effects remain in a third of the countries. Robustness checks and Bayes factor replications showing evidence for the absence of unemployment effects support the general impression from these initial analyses. After discussing this article's results and limitations, its broader implications are considered. On the one hand, the article offers a new perspective on the conceptualisation and measurement of unemployment risk. On the other hand, its theoretical argument, as well as its treatment of the resulting selection bias, can be broadly applied. Thus, this article can contribute to many other research questions regarding the (ir)relevance of individual life events for political attitudes and political behaviour.
... Despite the extensive empirical evidence, recent research has questioned to what extent income and unemployment assume a causal role in preference formation. O'Grady (2019) and Wehl (2019) argue that preferences are primarily formed during early-life socialisation, which implies that adult income and unemployment experiences have limited impact. Such doubts about the causality of material circumstances' effects have important implications. ...
... Beramendi and Rehm 2016;Corneo and Grüner 2002;Franko et al. 2013;Rueda and Stegmueller 2019). Secondly, those who are currently unemployed support more redistribution compared to the employed (Cusack et al. 2006;Pahontu 2021;Rehm 2011;Schwander 2019; but see Wehl 2019). Despite the strong support for self-interest theory, it remains possible that empirical estimates do not reveal causal relationships. ...
... 'unobserved heterogeneity'). For example, Wehl (2019) and O'Grady (2019) forcefully argue that the relationship between material circumstances and redistribution preferences is confounded by normative predispositions shaped during early-life socialisation (see also Ares 2020;Inglehart 2008). ...
Numerous studies show that those with lower income and the unemployed support more redistribution, which is attributed to material self-interest. However, recent studies assessing within-individual changes result in smaller and less consistent effect estimates. To explain why preferences do not narrowly follow material self-interest, this study argues that the effects of income and unemployment may be asymmetric, implying that improving and deteriorating material circumstances exert differently sized effects. The claims are tested using panel data from Great Britain and a weighted difference-in-difference estimator. The results show that only income increases (negatively) affect redistribution support while income decreases have null effects. In contrast, unemployment is estimated to have a strong and symmetrical effect in line with self-interest theory. These results add further evidence for the validity of self-interest theories but suggest that individuals are only boundedly rational.
Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at: https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2021.1963139 .
... En la encuesta se formula la siguiente pregunta: «¿Cuán protegido[s] por la ley laboral cree usted que se sienten en [país] los trabajadores?». A fin de contrastar adecuadamente la hipótesis insider-outsider, es necesario plantear una pregunta que indague si los encuestados están a favor o en contra de la regulación laboral.5 Otro problema del modelo insider-outsider de preferencias relativas al mercado de trabajo se refiere a la socialización política desde una edad temprana(Wehl 2019).6 Se puede ampliar esta información en el sitio web del Latinobarómetro en https://www. ...
Resumen
La perspectiva insider‐outsider, dominante en el discurso sobre la regulación laboral, sostiene que las disposiciones protectoras se mantienen vigentes en interés de sus beneficiarios (insiders), aunque perjudican a otros trabajadores menos acomodados (outsiders). Si la contraposición entre ambas categorías fuera tal como se formula en el modelo, los outsiders se opondrían rotundamente a la regulación. Sin embargo, nuestras evidencias de que los outsiders en los países en desarrollo están mayoritariamente a favor de las medidas regulatorias obligan a replantear la tajante dicotomía insider‐outsider. Sugerimos distintas líneas de investigación, como los procesos redistributivos, las transiciones, la equidad y el poder del empleador en los mercados de trabajo.
... This literature on shocks has mainly focused on how these events impact preferences via the self-interest mechanism (e.g., Naumann, Buss Bä hr, 2016;Gidron and Mijs, 2019;Margalit, 2019) with notable exceptions that find little impact of the Great Recession on preferences (Brooks and Manza, 2013). The evidence is mixed on whether these shocks generate lasting changes in preferences: some works suggest that only large, substantial shocks can do so (O'Grady, 2019), others find effects for smaller economic shocks (Owens and Pedulla, 2014;Naumann, Buss Bä hr, 2016), and others find generally no link (Wehl, 2019). Further, crises and threatening events do not necessarily turn individuals to the left (e.g., Durr, 1993;Stevenson, 2001;Jä ckle and Kö nig, 2018). ...
This study investigates the impact on redistributive preferences of one pervasive yet underexplored type of shock: natural disasters. Previous research has focused on smaller, endogenous shocks that do not share two key features of disasters: they are abrupt and collective experiences. The literature on economic shocks suggests they lead to increased demand for redistribution. Nevertheless, disasters are such abrupt ruptures that they could inhibit an increase in demand for redistribution because they may trigger psychological needs to justify the status quo. Further, their collective nature may push people to substitute government-based help for community or religious-based social insurance. In light of these conflicting accounts, I argue that how surprising a disaster is determines whether it is a deterrent or a catalyst of support for redistribution. To test my argument, I link World Values Survey data to information on subnational risk to natural disasters and find that risk of surprising disasters such as earthquakes and tsunamis increases demand for redistribution but risk of predictable disasters does not. The relationship is robust to controlling for a series of individual and sub-national district characteristics. An event study of earthquake incidence shows a similar pattern: more surprising earthquakes—those impacting rarely hit districts—drive increases in demand for redistribution.
... The notion of social class combines risk-exposure and ideology, and in a way, this makes sense. While they are different concepts, risk-exposure and ideology need not be orthogonal in the real world, and are in fact likely to covary (see also Wehl, 2019). Social class, as a result, is a powerful determinant of support for redistribution and for most social policies, with manual workers being among the strongest supporters and the self-employed constituting the main opponents (Svallfors, 2004). ...
This contribution investigates public attitudes toward providing financial help to the self-employed, a less well-researched area in the otherwise vibrant literature on welfare state attitudes. We analyse to what extent the self-employed themselves soften their general anti-statist stance in times of need, and how the public thinks about supporting those who usually tend to oppose government interventions. To answer these questions, we study public attitudes towards providing financial aid to the self-employed during the lockdowns adopted in response to the COVID pandemic in Switzerland, using survey data collected in the spring and in the autumn of 2020. The results show that most respondents favour the provision of financial support. In addition, the self-employed are the staunchest supporters of the more generous forms of help, like non-refundable payments. We conclude that, when exposed to significant economic risk, need and interests override ideological preferences for less state intervention.
... Third, the risk-based operationalization as suggested bySchwander and Häusermann (2013) allows for a more fine-grained and continuous measure whereas status-based measurements are binary or categorical. Political attitudes remain stable even after economic shocks like becoming unemployed(Wehl 2019). Hence, I argue that a person's risk, not her status, should determine her political attitudes. ...
The thesis deals with the question if and which consequences arise from labor market dualization. Focusing on the case of Germany, it asks whether there are sufficient differences between labor market insiders and outsiders to expect the emergence of a new political cleavage in the nearer future. Using survey data collected between 1990 and 2016, it examines which individual factors are correlated with an increased labor market risk and how these correlations have changed over time. The thesis also analyzes the policy preferences of insiders and outsiders, which parties they voted for and answers the questions how responsive politics has been towards the two groups. The findings show that differences are smaller than expected. The emergence of a new cleavage thus appears rather unlikely. What is more, outsiders turn out in lower numbers than insiders, so parties have not much to gain when turning to them and trying to tailor their programmes towards outsiders’ needs.
... Young people without a higher education represent one of the most fragile market segments, with the highest risk of unemployment, more difficulties in entering the labor market, and more frequent involuntary working transitions, with respect to those who reached more elevated educational levels. They are frequently employed in temporary jobs, with undignified working conditions low pay and with scarce chances of developing their skills (Wehl, 2019). Moreover, higher education is necessary to create graduates who can understand and prevent global menaces; to detect different, complex, and original solutions for these challenges; and to create a society that can contribute to well-being and satisfaction (Peterson and Helms, 2014). ...
Based on the life design paradigm and career construction adaptation model and on recent directions from the perspective of sustainable and inclusive career guidance, the study aimed at examining the relationship between career adaptability, the tendency to consider systemic challenges to attain sustainable development, and state personal and social hope and their role on the tendency to invest in higher education. The analyses carried out involving 416 Italian high school students found that career adaptability and the tendency to consider systemic challenges in order to attain sustainable development were directly and indirectly, through state personal and social hope, related to the tendency to invest in higher education. The results obtained allowed to provide new contributions to extend results previously described by the life design approach in career development issues and provided useful suggestions for preventive career interventions.
... Another challenge to the insider-outsider model of labour market preferences refers to the causal link between labour market status and preferences for employment protection. Recent research shows that socioeconomic background simultaneously determines both the risk of getting unemployed and political socialization experiences from early childhood onwards(Wehl 2018). 5 Managers and business owners are asked: 'To what degree are Labor Regulations an obstacle to the current operations of this establishment?' and the response options are 'none', 'minor obstacle', 'moderate obstacle', 'major obstacle', and 'very severe obstacle'. ...
Contrary to the predictions of the insider–outsider model, we show that the large majority of outsiders in developing countries support, rather than oppose, protective labour regulations. This evidence holds across countries in different regions, across different types of
protective labour regulations (i.e. severance payment, minimum wages, working time), and for different categories of outsiders (i.e. unemployed workers and employees without access to legally
mandated labour benefits). We revise the economic and political assumptions of the insider–outsider model, discussing their empirical relevance in a developing country context.
Résumé
Selon l'approche «insiders‐outsiders», qui domine le discours sur le droit du travail, la législation protectrice de l'emploi favorise les travailleurs dotés d'un emploi stable, les insiders, au détriment des outsiders, moins bien lotis. Les outsiders devraient de ce fait être favorables à la déréglementation. Les auteurs observent pourtant que, dans les pays en développement, ceux‐ci sont au contraire très majoritairement attachés à la protection de l'emploi. Ils plaident donc pour une remise en question de l'opposition traditionnelle entre insiders et outsiders et pour une meilleure prise en compte d'aspects comme la mutualisation des gains, les transitions professionnelles, l'équité ou le pouvoir de l'employeur.
This study introduces a bounded rationality approach to welfare preference formation under exposure to labor market risks. It argues that risk exposure only increases welfare demand when it is reasonable to assume that workers are aware of their risk exposure and when future-related concerns are currently salient. Empirical analyses of longitudinal data from Switzerland and 28 European countries support the theory. Swiss workers only optimize their welfare preferences in a forward-looking manner when they become unemployed, and only the national unemployment rate is found to increase welfare demand in European countries. In contrast, a variety of risks on the occupational and individual level drawn from previous research are found to be unrelated with welfare preferences. The implication is that the risk exposure of employed workers may matter less for their welfare preferences and downstream political phenomena such as voting behavior than commonly expected.
The “insider‐outsider” perspective has come to dominate the discourse on labor regulations. It argues that protective regulations hurt the less well‐off outsiders but are kept in place because of the interests of the insiders, those who are covered by the regulations. But if the insider‐outsider divide were as depicted in the standard representation, outsiders would be strongly against regulations. However, we present evidence that in fact a large majority of outsiders in developing countries support protective labor regulations, calling for a rethink of a sharp insider‐outsider divide. We suggest a number of avenues for exploration, including income sharing, transitions, fairness, and employer power in labor markets.
How do economic shocks and financial resilience shape civic engagement, especially for the economically insecure? I turn to the early months of the coronavirus pandemic for insights. In April 2020, with more than 23 million adults unemployed, the US government asked residents to participate in the constitutionally mandated decennial census. I test how variations in income shocks from the shutdown and sources of financial resilience predict disparities in census completion, a civic act designed to minimize participation barriers. First, I use nationally representative survey data to demonstrate that policies that protect the economically vulnerable from the full impacts of economic shocks also predict higher census completion rates. Then, I use Google Trends data to show that high unemployment search volume interacted with low resilience to predict depressed census completion. Findings shed light on how economic crises can widen participation gaps—with representation and resource consequences—and how policies that lessen acute economic shocks may reduce participation disparities.
In recent years, we are witnessing a reversal of the foundations of modernity, that saw the future as a symbol of development. Thanks to progress and growth, considered as ‘perpetual’ movements of history, the individual did not need to think about tomorrow, because it came by itself, every day could only be better (Pulcini, 2019).
Are self-interest or presumably stable value orientations and other predispositions the main drivers behind social policy attitudes? This article contributes to this debate by moving away from its binary discussion. It differentiates between attitude changes driven by self-interest that are in line with pre-existing predispositions and those that are not. Empirically, this article focuses on changes of labour market policy attitudes after employment transitions and job insecurity changes. More precisely, this article differentiates between attitude changes within three subgroups. (A) People whose self-interest after the employment transitions reinforces their prior predispositions. (B) People without strong prior predispositions, who are thus unconstrained by them. And (C) people whose self-interest after the employment transitions contradicts their prior predispositions. Panel analyses with fixed effects use German SOEP waves from 1997 and 2002. Main effects suggest an important role for self-interest as they show significant attitudinal reactions after most of the transitions and perception changes. However, subgroup analyses result in a somewhat mixed picture. They show attitude changes within different subgroups after different transitions and perception changes. This mixed empirical picture suggests caution when interpreting attitudinal change or stability after changing material circumstances as a sign for the relative importance of self-interest or predispositions.
Hvordan kan vi utforme trygdeordninger som legger til rette for høy sysselsetting, samtidig som du får et sikkerhetsnett hvis du faller utenfor arbeidslivet i kortere eller lengre perioder? Eldrebølgen og andre utviklingstrekk på samfunnsnivå gjør dette til et stadig mer aktuelt spørsmål i en rekke europeiske land. En ny ISF-rapport sammenligner trygdepolitikk og trygdemottak i perioden 2005 til 2015 i åtte forskjellige europeiske land – de fem nordiske landene, samt Nederland, Storbritannia og Tyskland.
The literature addressing attitudes about social policy and the welfare state has been telling us for decades that welfare interventions are supported by those individuals who benefit from a specific measure. The diffusion of ‘demanding’ active labour market policies (ALMPs), however, challenges this relationship. Using a novel dataset, I analyse which individual- and country-level factors explain public support for demanding ALMPs in five Western European countries. The results show that labour market risk and ideological orientation influence public attitudes towards these ALMPs. Thereby, unemployed individuals sympathising with the political right are more strongly opposed to demanding measures than employed individuals with the same political preferences. Moreover, aggregate support is found to be correlated with the country's ALMP legacy, varying from high levels in Germany and the UK to low levels in Denmark and France. The findings suggest that most ALMPs are in fact implemented despite the opposition of their beneficiaries.
In this article, we analyse the ritual of null hypothesis significance testing among the European sociologists.
The focus is on the distinction between statistical significance and substantive, sociological
significance. We review all articles published in the European Sociological Review between 2000–
2004 and 2010–2014 that use regression models (N ¼ 356). Our main aim is to determine whether the
authors discuss the effect size of their findings and distinguish substantive from statistical significance.
We apply a five-item questionnaire to each article and find that about half of the articles erroneously
interpret a statistically insignificant coefficient as a zero effect, while only one in three engage in
a discussion of the substantive meaning of the effect sizes. Moreover, our findings show a negative
trend in the practice of significance testing over the past 15 years. These results are similar to those of a comparable review in the field of economics. We conclude by providing a set of recommendations on how to reduce the misuse of significance testing in sociological research, through an informed benchmarking of the findings.
Recently, developed economies have witnessed an emerging dualism between the so-called labor market ‘insiders and outsiders’—two groups facing divergent levels of employment security and prospects. Those on the ‘inside’ occupy stable jobs, while those on the ‘outside’ confront increased levels of social and economic risks. There are, however, various prominent, but divergent, operationalizations of the insider–outsider phenomenon. While some scholars opt for indicators rooted in current labor market status of individuals, others prefer to consider occupational class groups as bases of the insider–outsider divide. As these operationalizations of outsiderness capture different profiles of outsiders, we test the extent to which they lead to consistent or inconsistent conclusions about electoral behavior. The article yields two consistent findings that are robust across all the operationalizations: that outsiders are less likely to vote for major right parties than are insiders, and that outsiders are more likely to abstain from voting. Additionally, we find that occupation-based outsiders tend to support radical right parties, while status-based outsiders rather opt for radical left parties—a finding supported by the association between social risk and authoritarian preferences. We test our expectations using multinomial logit models estimating vote choice on the first five waves of the European Social Survey from 2002 to 2010 across western Europe.
This is a cross-national study of ethnic-minority disadvantage in the labour market. It focuses on the experiences of the second generation, that is, of the children of immigrants, in a range of affluent western countries (Western Europe, North America, Australia, Israel). Standard analyses, using the most authoritative available datasets for each country, enable the reader to make precise comparisons. The study reveals that most groups of non-European ancestry continue to experience substantial ethnic penalties in the second (and later) generations. But the magnitude of these penalties varies quite substantially between countries, with major implications for social policy. This account of minority groups in different countries provides important information for policy makers considering their own responses to ethnic-minority disadvantage.
Much politico-economic research on individuals’ preferences is cross-sectional and does not model dynamic aspects of preference
or attitude formation. I present a Bayesian dynamic panel model, which facilitates the analysis of repeated preferences using
individual-level panel data. My model deals with three problems. First, I explicitly include feedback from previous preferences
taking into account that available survey measures of preferences are categorical. Second, I model individuals' initial conditions
when entering the panel as resulting from observed and unobserved individual attributes. Third, I capture unobserved individual
preference heterogeneity both via standard parametric random effects and a robust alternative based on Bayesian nonparametric
density estimation. I use this model to analyze the impact of income and wealth on preferences for government intervention
using the British Household Panel Study from 1991 to 2007.
Recent research has established that employment risk shapes social policy preferences. However, risk is often conceptualized
as an alternative measure of the socio-economic status. We show that employment risk and socio-economic status are distinct,
crosscutting determinants of social policy preferences. More specifically, we analyze the policy preferences of high-skilled
labor market outsiders as a cross-pressured group. We first establish that labor market vulnerability has spread well into
the more highly educated segments of the population. We then show that the effect of labor market vulnerability on social
policy preferences even increases with higher educational attainment. We conclude that that labor market risk and educational
status are not interchangeable and that the high skilled are particularly sensitive to the experience of labor market risk.
Thereby, our findings point to a potential cross-class alliance between more highly and lower skilled vulnerable individuals
in support of a redistributive and activating welfare state. Thus, they have far-reaching implications for our understanding
of both the politicization of insider/outsider divides and the politics of welfare support.
The purpose of this paper is to provide an easy template for the inclusion of the Bayes factor in reporting experimental results, particularly as a recommendation for articles in the Journal of Problem Solving. The Bayes factor provides information with a similar purpose to the p-value—to allow the researcher to make statistical inferences from data provided by experiments. While the p-value is widely used, the Bayes factor provides several advantages, particularly in that it allows the researcher to make a statement about the alternative hypothesis, rather than just the null hypothesis. In addition, it provides a clearer estimate of the amount of evidence present in the data. Building on previous work by authors such as Wagenmakers (2007), Rouder et al. (2009), and Masson (2011), this article provides a short introduction to Bayes factors, before providing a practical guide to their computation using examples from published work on problem solving.
This article deals with recent developments of atypical employment in Germany, its present extent and current patterns. In its introductory remarks it differentiates between standard employment and atypical forms. It then describes the development and structures, enabling an analysis of the long-term consequences. It goes on to introduce a crucial distinction between atypical and precarious employment on the basis of explicitly defined criteria. The article ends by presenting certain explanations to a large extent missing in existing research.
Literature on welfare attitudes has reached a stylized scheme in which egalitarian values and self-interest concerns are the
two main determinants of welfare attitudes. We aim to bring forward existing research by identifying additional values that
people draw on to elaborate opinions on welfare issues. Using data from the European Social Survey 2008 and 26 countries,
we find that values such as multiculturalism or authoritarianism, among others, lie at the roots of welfare attitudes. However,
egalitarianism is the only value with a significant effect in all countries. Differences between welfare regimes in the values
associated with welfare opinions exist but are unconnected with aggregate support for the welfare state, suggesting that this
institution can achieve a high level of legitimacy on different moral grounds.
Child poverty and the well-being of children is an important policy issue throughout the industrialised world. Some 47 million children in ‘rich’ countries live in families so poor that their health and well-being are at risk. The main themes addressed in this book are: the extent and trend of child poverty in industrialised nations; outcomes for children – for example, the relationship between childhood experiences and children's health; country studies and emerging issues; and child and family policies. All the contributions underline the urgent need for a comprehensive policy to reduce child poverty rates and to improve the well-being of children. Findings are clearly presented and key focus points are identified for policy makers to consider.
We show that propensity score matching (PSM), an enormously popular method of preprocessing data for causal inference, often accomplishes the opposite of its intended goal—thus increasing imbalance, inefficiency, model dependence, and bias. The weakness of PSM comes from its attempts to approximate a completely randomized experiment, rather than, as with other matching methods, a more efficient fully blocked randomized experiment. PSM is thus uniquely blind to the often large portion of imbalance that can be eliminated by approximating full blocking with other matching methods. Moreover, in data balanced enough to approximate complete randomization, either to begin with or after pruning some observations, PSM approximates random matching which, we show, increases imbalance even relative to the original data. Although these results suggest researchers replace PSM with one of the other available matching methods, propensity scores have other productive uses.
The transformation of night-watchman states into welfare states is one of the most notable societal developments in recent history. In 1880, not a single country had a nationally compulsory social policy program. A few decades later, every single one of today's rich democracies had adopted programs covering all or almost all of the main risks people face: old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment. These programs rapidly expanded in terms of range, reach, and resources. Today, all rich democracies cover all main risks for a vast majority of citizens, with binding public or mandatory private programs. Three aspects of this remarkable transformation are particularly fascinating: the trend (the transformation to insurance states happened in all rich democracies); differences across countries (the generosity of social policy varies greatly across countries); and the dynamics of the process. This book offers a theory that not only explains this remarkable transition but also explains cross-national differences and the role of crises for social policy development. Directly speaks to the role of crises for social policy development Avoids overly complex statistical modeling, and most empirical evidence is presented in the form of easily understood bi-variate scatterplots Pays serious attention to micro-level behavior to derive macro-level implications.
This book contends that beneath the frenzied activism of the sixties and the seeming quiescence of the seventies, a "silent revolution" has been occurring that is gradually but fundamentally changing political life throughout the Western world. Ronald Inglehart focuses on two aspects of this revolution: a shift from an overwhelming emphasis on material values and physical security toward greater concern with the quality of life; and an increase in the political skills of Western publics that enables them to play a greater role in making important political decisions.
Party identification and core political values are central elements in the political belief systems of ordinary citizens. Are these predispositions related to one another? Does party identification influence core political values or are partisan identities grounded in such values? This article draws upon theoretical works on partisan information processing and value-based reasoning to derive competing hypotheses about whether partisanship shapes political values or political values shape partisanship. The hypotheses are tested by using structural equation modeling techniques to estimate dynamic models of attitude stability and constraint with data from the 1992-94-96 National Election Study panel survey. The analyses reveal that partisan identities are more stable than the principles of equal opportunity, limited government, traditional family values, and moral tolerance; party identification constrains equal opportunity, limited government, and moral tolerance; and these political values do not constrain party identification.
Scholars have long debated the individual-level relationship between partisanship and policy preferences. We argue that partisanship and issue attitudes cause changes in each other, but the pattern of influence varies systematically. Issue-based change in party identification should occur among individuals who are aware of party differences on an issue and find that issue to be salient. Individuals who are aware of party differences, but do not attach importance to the issue, should evidence party-based issue change. Those lacking awareness of party differences on an issue should show neither effect. We test our account by examining individuals' party identifications and their attitudes on abortion, government spending and provision of services, and government help for African Americans using the 1992-94-96 National Election Study panel study, finding strong support for our argument. We discuss the implications of our findings both for the microlevel study of party identification and the macrolevel analysis of partisan change.
A classical question in political sociology is whether unemployment depresses political involvement. However, we still know very little about how individual and contextual factors influence the involvement of unemployed citizens. We therefore provide a framework to study variation across countries as well as among the unemployed. Borrowing mechanisms from psychological unemployment research, we develop a set of hypotheses about individual and contextual moderators that mitigate or exacerbate the negative effect of unemployment on political involvement. Our empirical analyses are based on the European Social Survey and use internal political efficacy as a dependent variable. Multi-level models with interaction effects show that the negative effect of unemployment on political efficacy is stronger in countries with low welfare state generosity, low levels of economic development, high unemployment rates, and large income inequality. On the individual level, the negative effect is stronger for men, middle-to-high-income earners, and political independents. The effect of age is hump-shaped (stronger negative effect for the young and older citizens). An important implication of our results is that public policies can foster the political integration of vulnerable citizens and therefore make a contribution to the functioning of democracy.
Past work suggests that support for welfare in the US is heavily influenced by citizens' racial attitudes. Indeed, the idea that many Americans think of welfare recipients as poor Blacks (and especially as poor Black women) has been a common explanation for Americans' lukewarm support for redistribution. Here, we draw on a new online survey experiment conducted with national samples in the US, UK and Canada, designed to extend research on how racialized portrayals of policy beneficiaries affect attitudes toward redistribution. We designed a series of innovative survey vignettes that experimentally manipulate the ethno-racial background of beneficiaries for various redistributive programs. The findings provide, for the first time, cross- national, cross- domain, and cross-ethno-racial extensions of the American literature on the impact of racial cues on support for redistributive policy. Our results also demonstrate that race clearly matters for policy support, although its impact varies by context and by the racial group under consideration.
Significance
Unemployment has devastating effects on people’s economic and social circumstances. Its negative effects on mental health and subjective well-being are also well documented. However, until now, there has been no quantitative evaluation of the moral consequences of unemployment. Here, using behavioral experiments and an unusual subject engagement strategy, we present evidence that becoming unemployed erodes the extent to which a person acknowledges earned entitlement, i.e., acknowledges an individual’s right to that gained through his or her own effort or endeavor. This finding has important implications for the way we should think about economic and political systems. It indicates that, in addition to a causal link running from preferences to outcomes, there exists a feedback loop from outcomes to preferences that needs to be taken into account when considering system dynamics.
This book is the third in the ‘Beliefs in government’ series, and examines the effects of the post‐war arrival of the welfare state in the countries of Western Europe. The welfare state inaugurated a vast expansion in the role of government, which led to fears that the increased expectations of citizens would lead to government overload and to ‘ungovernability’. This book sheds new and surprising light on such fears. It begins by examining the expanding scope of government in the post‐war period. Drawing on a vast data set, stretching back over the past two decades and across Europe, it clarifies public attitudes towards the range and extent of government activity. It identifies changes in the public's political agenda, along with attitudes towards the size of government, taxation, and the equality and security goals of the welfare state. Attitudes towards government intervention in the economy, the environment, and the media are also examined. The book's final chapters assess the significance for governments of beliefs about the scope of the government.
The Oxford Handbook of Political Theory provides comprehensive and critical coverage of the lively and contested field of political theory. Long recognized as one of the main branches of political science, political theory has in recent years burgeoned in many different directions. In this book forty-five articles by distinguished political theorists look at the state of the field, where it has been in the recent past, and where it is likely to go in future. They examine political theory's edges as well as its core, the globalizing context of the field, and the challenges presented by social, economic, and technological changes. The Handbook is one of The Oxford Handbooks of Political Science - a ten-volume set of reference books offering authoritative and engaging critical overviews of the state of political science.
The 2008/2009 economic crisis has been identified as an important element contributing to declining trust in institutions in Europe and worldwide. However, it is unclear whether this decline in trust is distributed homogenously among citizens or whether there are differences across social strata. This article applies multilevel models to six waves of European Social Survey (ESS) data to analyse changes in trust in the European Parliament (EP) from 2002 to 2012 in 20 European Union countries. Moreover, it investigates whether individuals with different socioeconomic backgrounds experienced different reductions in trust. The results indicate that trust in the EP declined the most in the peripheral European countries hit hardest by the economic crisis: Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Cyprus, Greece and Spain. Furthermore, the results suggest that the decline in trust was more pronounced among subjects with lower social status. The tightening of the link between social and political inequalities is especially preoccupying considering the importance of trust in institutions for citizens to actively participate in society, voice their needs and demand their place at the table. Hence, the worsening economic conditions, combined with declining levels of trust, are not only troublesome for the functioning of democracies as a whole, but they are also problematic at the individual level as they are likely to perpetuate the divide among subjects at different ends of the social ladder.
Most questions in social and biomedical sciences are causal in nature: what would happen to individuals, or to groups, if part of their environment were changed? In this groundbreaking text, two world-renowned experts present statistical methods for studying such questions. This book starts with the notion of potential outcomes, each corresponding to the outcome that would be realized if a subject were exposed to a particular treatment or regime. In this approach, causal effects are comparisons of such potential outcomes. The fundamental problem of causal inference is that we can only observe one of the potential outcomes for a particular subject. The authors discuss how randomized experiments allow us to assess causal effects and then turn to observational studies. They lay out the assumptions needed for causal inference and describe the leading analysis methods, including, matching, propensity-score methods, and instrumental variables. Many detailed applications are included, with special focus on practical aspects for the empirical researcher.
A half century of research shows that most citizens are woefully uninformed about public affairs, liberal-conservative ideologies, and the issues of the day. This had led most scholars to conclude that policy voting lies beyond the reach of typical American voters and to condemn them as politically inept. This book breaks sharply with this view. Once attention turns away from liberal-conservative predispositions and issue preferences, there is indisputable evidence that nearly everyone holds genuine policy principles and uses these to guide their votes come Election Day. Three principles that reflect the major cleavages long dividing the Democratic and Republican parties are paramount: limited government, traditional morality, and military strength. Integrating work from social and political history, social and political psychology, and electoral behavior, the book argues that these three principles are available in the minds of nearly all citizens; function as central heuristics in their belief systems; are rooted deeply in basic human values; and guide presidential choices to a comparable degree for voters across the sophistication spectrum. Analysis of opinion data from the past six presidential elections and three new surveys yields unequivocal support for these claims. Contrary to the indictment leveled by most of the scholarly community and political pundits more generally, ordinary citizens who are neither deeply knowledgeable nor engaged with the world of public affairs prove as adept as their more sophisticated counterparts at grounding presidential votes in abstract views about public policy.
This article investigates whether self-interest as compared with values or ideological dispositions shapes individual attitudes
towards the welfare state. Causal interpretations of how self-interest, values, and welfare state attitudes are linked have
been difficult to sustain so far, as the research mainly relies on static, cross-sectional analyses. We address this empirical
challenge using data from the Dutch Longitudinal Internet Studies for the Social Sciences panel (2008–2013) that covers the
period of the international economic crisis. We investigate how individuals change their attitudes in times of economic hardship. Our findings confirm theoretical expectations that people change their support
for unemployment benefits in reaction to changes in their individual material circumstances. Job loss leads to an increased
support for public provision of unemployment benefits. The analysis also suggests that this attitude change is persistent.
After the temporarily unemployed have found a new job, they do not return to their pre-unemployment attitude. In contrast,
individual support for life course-related domains of the welfare state such as health care or pensions is not affected by
changes in individual material circumstances. Our results show that individual material circumstances and thus self-interest
have a sizable effect on how individuals change their welfare state attitudes.
The experience of the second generation of migrants gives a clearer idea of whether liberal developed countries of Europe and North America provide equal opportunities to all their citizens, irrespective of their ethnic or national origin. This chapter examines the relationship between patterns of ethnic disadvantage and the nature of each country's economy, its patterns of social fluidity, its conception of nationhood, racism and xenophobia, and the relevant government policies. It discusses the gross disadvantages that ethnic minorities typically experience in the labour market and the net disadvantages (or ethnic penalties) after controlling for individual characteristics, especially for educational level and age. The chapter also assesses the gross differences between groups to determine the overall extent of ethnic stratification in each society and the nature of the vertical mosaic.
Prominent accounts of public opinion argue that citizens’ preferences are unstable, with stated desires on policies varying wildly from survey to survey, and ideologically incoherent, with preferences on multiple policies evidencing little or no structure. In the aggregate, these findings suggest that many voters are not capable of fulfilling their normative role in the democratic system. In this article, we challenge this conventional view and argue that the apparent instability and incoherence among the public are both overstated and outdated. Using panel surveys from the 1970s, 1990s, and 2010s, we conduct a multi-trait multi-method (MTMM) confirmatory factor analysis of citizen preferences in multiple issue areas. Our results reveal a surprising degree of preference stability in all three time periods across many policy domains. Furthermore, our results reveal increasing levels of ideological thinking over time and that these patterns of stability and coherence hold across subpopulations defined by levels of sophistication.
It has often been argued that political attitudes vary along a continuum from highly symbolic to nonsymbolic and that symbolic political attitudes are more stable across the life cycle than are nonsymbolic political attitudes. The evidence used to support this contention shows that the overtime consistency of attitude reports is high for symbolic attitudes, such as political party affiliation, and low for nonsymbolic attitudes, such as attitudes toward specific government policies. This paper reports three investigations that decomposed test-retest correlations between attitude reports into components due to attitude change and attitude measurement unreliability. Data from 1956-60, 1972-76, and 1980 National Election Panel Studies (NES) revealed that reports of symbolic attitudes were more consistent over time because they contained less random measurement error, not because these attitudes were more persistent over time. The differences in measurement precision across attitude object categories appear to be due to differences in the format of the survey questions used to measure them. It therefore seems that the persistence and potency of political attitudes vary more across citizens than they do across attitude object categories. All of these findings suggest the need for revision of conventional wisdom about the viability of some central assertions of democratic theory.
This three-wave cohort-sequential longitudinal study (N = 1302) examined the development of two core political attitudes, economic egalitarianism and ethnocentrism, among Dutch youths between age 12 and 31. Longitudinal regression analyses revealed a curvilinear mean level development for both attitudes, reflecting an increased disagreement with economic redistribution and multiculturalism around late adolescence. Furthermore, attitudes became decreasingly polarized (i.e., less extreme) and increasingly stable with age. Finally, several effects of attitudes' correlates gradually changed: The effect of educational level on ethnocentrism increased with age, whereas the effect of gender diminished. Regional effects on ethnocentrism developed as youths resided in a new area. No age-related change was found in the effect of parental SES. Overall, these findings support the idea that attitudes mature during the formative phase of adolescence and that this process slows down during emerging adulthood. Furthermore, these results support developmental explanations for the association between attitudes and their correlates.
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How do Americans organize their political beliefs? This article argues that party polarization and the growing prominence of moral issues in recent decades have catalyzed different responses by different groups of Americans. The article investigates systematic heterogeneity in the organization of political attitudes using relational class analysis, a graph-based method for detecting multiple patterns of opinion in survey data. Three subpopulations, each characterized by a distinctive way of organizing its political beliefs, are identified: ideologues, whose political attitudes strongly align with either liberal or conservative categories; alternatives, who are instead morally conservative but economically liberal, or vice versa; and agnostics, who exhibit weak associations between political beliefs. Individuals' sociodemographic profiles, partic- ularly their income, education, and religiosity, lie at the core of the different ways in which they understand politics. Results show that while ideologues have gone through a process of issue alignment, alternatives have grown increasingly apart from the political agendas of both parties. The conflictual presence of conservative and liberal preferences has often been resolved by alternative voters in favor of the Republican Party.
Given the significance of the left-right dimension as one of the most frequently employed capping term of ideological thought in most western democracies, the question arises as to how people come to identify themselves along this continuum. Drawing on a set of parent-child pairs located in Catalonia, we seek to determine whether the processes found elsewhere with respect to the intergenerational transmission of partisanship and issue stances also apply to left-right ideology, in a novel context characterized by the presence of a distinctive, partially cross-cutting dimension based on center-periphery loyalties. Results provide strong support for the principles of the direct transmission model as derived from social learning theory, while also showing the significant role of parents' place identities in conditioning the passing on of left-right orientations.
An oft-heard concern about the sustainability of the welfare state is that generous social welfare provisions serve as an
important pull factor in immigrants’ consideration of their preferred country of destination. With their accumulated social
risks, immigrants are averagely more likely to claim welfare benefits, suggesting that generous provisions reinforce migration
flows, and that migrants benefit more from welfare than they contribute to it. Yet, little is known about what immigrants
actually think about government support to ensure a reasonable standard of living. To study immigrants’ ideas about the welfare
state, we analyse the 2008 ‘Welfare Attitudes’ module of the European Social Survey. Our analysis shows that, although immigrants
have somewhat stronger pro-welfare opinions than non-immigrants, these are largely explained by their more disadvantaged position
in society and their more depressed opinions of the social malaise taking place in their receptive society. Furthermore, much
to our surprise, we find that immigrants’ views on welfare closely follow those of the non-migrant population of the country
they are living in, suggesting strong social integration at the opinion level.
This article contrasts short-term self-interest and longstanding symbolic attitudes as determinants of (1) voters' attitudes toward government policy on four controversial issues (unemployment, national health insurance, busing, and law and order), and (2) issue voting concerning those policy areas. In general, we found the various self-interest measures to have very little effect in determining either policy preferences or voting behavior. In contrast, symbolic attitudes (liberal or conservative ideology, party identification, and racial prejudice) had major effects. Nor did self-interest play much of a role in creating @'@issue publics@' that were particularly attentive to, informed about, or constrained in their attitudes about these specific policy issues. Conditions that might facilitate more self-interested political attitudes, specifically having privatistic (rather than public-regarding) personal values, perceiving the policy area as a major national problem, being high in political sophistication, perceiving the government as responsive, or having a sense of political efficacy, were also explored, but had no effect. The possibility that some long-term self-interest might be reflected in either group membership or in symbolic attitudes themselves is examined. While such possibilities cannot be definitively rejected, problems with interpreting standard demographic findings as self-interest effects are discussed.
This analysis of changes in the party affiliations of American adults between 1952 and 1972 (1) assesses the stability of the relationship between party and a set of causal variables and (2) examines the extent to which the observed changes are attributable to changes in the electorate's demographic composition. We found that indicators of stratification position, race, region, religion, and political socialization have exerted a nearly constant causal influence on party throughout the twenty-year period. A model which assumed constant effects (equal regression slopes) across the six elections explained only 2% less of the variance in party than a model which allowed the slopes to vary across elections. Of the variables in the causal model, socialization--as indicated by father's party preference--has the largest effect on party affiliation. The addition to our model of the demographic variables, age and cohort, revealed that both factors influence individuals' party affiliations. Though age and cohort explain only a small portion of the variance in party, examination of the net differences in mean party affiliation between age groups and between cohorts showed that aging does produce a net shift away from the Democratic party and that the Depression has had lasting effects on the preferences of cohort members formulating their preferences at that time.
We explore the impact of prosocial orientations on a domain of American public opinion that has puzzled many-attitudes toward social welfare policies. We focus on the orientation of humanitarianism, i.e., a sense of obligation to help those in need, and find that this value can explain support for a wide variety of social welfare policies. We argue that humanitarianism is an important element of the American sociopolitical ethos, although it has received little attention in the public opinion literature. We contrast humanitarianism with egalitarianism and show that these dispositions lead people to support distinctive sets of policies that constitute different types of welfare state. While egalitarianism causes people to embrace policies that mandate an extensive economic role for the government, humanitarianism is associated with more modest policies that seek to address the problems of the needy. Support for these more modest policies has generally been much greater in the United States than support for more invasive policies that seek to tinker with the free market. Thus, we argue that humanitarianism provides a better explanation for public opinion toward welfare in the United States than egalitarianism. We discuss the implications of these findings for public opinion research.
In a 1935 paper and in his book Theory of Probability, Jeffreys developed a methodology for quantifying the evidence in favor of a scientific theory. The centerpiece was a number, now called the Bayes factor, which is the posterior odds of the null hypothesis when the prior probability on the null is one-half. Although there has been much discussion of Bayesian hypothesis testing in the context of criticism of P-values, less attention has been given to the Bayes factor as a practical tool of applied statistics. In this article we review and discuss the uses of Bayes factors in the context of five scientific applications in genetics, sports, ecology, sociology, and psychology. We emphasize the following points:
Basics Introduction The problem of missing data Concepts of MCAR, MAR and MNAR Simple solutions that do not (always) work Multiple imputation in a nutshell Goal of the book What the book does not cover Structure of the book Exercises Multiple imputation Historic overview Incomplete data concepts Why and when multiple imputation works Statistical intervals and tests Evaluation criteria When to use multiple imputation How many imputations? Exercises Univariate missing data How to generate multiple imputations Imputation under the normal linear normal Imputation under non-normal distributions Predictive mean matching Categorical data Other data types Classification and regression trees Multilevel data Non-ignorable methods Exercises Multivariate missing data Missing data pattern Issues in multivariate imputation Monotone data imputation Joint Modeling Fully Conditional Specification FCS and JM Conclusion Exercises Imputation in practice Overview of modeling choices Ignorable or non-ignorable? Model form and predictors Derived variables Algorithmic options Diagnostics Conclusion Exercises Analysis of imputed data What to do with the imputed data? Parameter pooling Statistical tests for multiple imputation Stepwise model selection Conclusion Exercises Case studies Measurement issues Too many columns Sensitivity analysis Correct prevalence estimates from self-reported data Enhancing comparability Exercises Selection issues Correcting for selective drop-out Correcting for non-response Exercises Longitudinal data Long and wide format SE Fireworks Disaster Study Time raster imputation Conclusion Exercises Extensions Conclusion Some dangers, some do's and some don'ts Reporting Other applications Future developments Exercises Appendices: Software R S-Plus Stata SAS SPSS Other software References Author Index Subject Index
The relationship between political preferences and material circumstances has stimulated one of the most vibrant discussions
in the social sciences. However, the verdict is still out on the extent to which political preferences are a function of material
circumstances, stable ideological commitments, or some combination thereof. Drawing on new panel data from the General Social
Survey, we further this debate by examining whether becoming unemployed or losing income affects individuals' preferences
for redistribution. Using individual-level fixed-effects models, we show that preferences for redistribution are malleable,
rather than fixed, corresponding to predictions offered by a materialist perspective. Individuals want more redistribution
when they experience unemployment or lose household income. Ultimately, we contribute new empirical insights that further
the sociological understanding of the forces shaping political preferences.
Problems involving causal inference have dogged at the heels of statistics since its earliest days. Correlation does not imply causation, and yet causal conclusions drawn from a carefully designed experiment are often valid. What can a statistical model say about causation? This question is addressed by using a particular model for causal inference (Holland and Rubin 1983; Rubin 1974) to critique the discussions of other writers on causation and causal inference. These include selected philosophers, medical researchers, statisticians, econometricians, and proponents of causal modeling.
Insider–outsider theory argues that in dual labour markets there are two groups with opposing preferences regarding protection against dismissal: (i) insiders with permanent work contracts who defend employment protection, because it increases their rents, and (ii) outsiders (temporary workers and the unemployed) who see protection as barriers to mobility and demand deregulation. Although this argument is influential in the political economy literature, there is little empirical research on outsiders’ preferences regarding employment protection. This article tests the argument using French data on support for a proposed reform of employment protection. The results show that permanent and temporary workers do not differ significantly in their support for employment protection, while some evidence indicates that the unemployed do show greater support for deregulation. The article concludes that insider–outsider theory overemphasises the relevance of employment protection for temporary workers and that care should be taken not to place these workers in a composite outsider group with the unemployed.
: This paper examines the relationships between employment status, social capital, and the participation of young people in different kinds of political activities such as contacting, consumer, and protest activities. We focus on the role of social capital for political participation, addressing three related questions: Do unemployed and employed youth display different levels of social capital and political participation? Does social capital favor the political participation of unemployed and employed youth? Is social capital more important for unemployed youth than for employed youth? To address these questions we compare long-term unemployed youth to regularly employed youth using original survey data. Our analysis suggests that the employment status has only a limited impact on political participation, affecting only consumer actions. In contrast, the social capital resulting from associational involvement is positively correlated to political participation. However, rather than countering the effect of exclusion from the labor market, it plays a similar role for unemployed youth and employed youth.
Adjustments for bias in observational studies are not always confined to variables that were measured prior to treatment. Estimators that adjust for a concomitant variable that has been affected by the treatment are generally biased. The bias may be written as the sum of two easily interpreted components: one component is present only in observational studies; the other is common to both observational studies and randomized experiments. The first component of bias will be zero when the affected posttreatment concomitant variable is, in a certain sense, a surrogate for an unobserved pretreatment variable. The second component of bias can often be addressed by an appropriate sensitivity analysis.
To what extent do personal circumstances, as compared to ideological dispositions, drive voters’ preferences on welfare policy? Addressing this question is difficult because a person's ideological position can be an outcome of material interest rather than an independent source of preferences. The article deals with this empirical challenge using an original panel study carried out over four years, tracking the labor market experiences and the political attitudes of a national sample of Americans before and after the eruption of the financial crisis. The analysis shows that the personal experience of economic hardship, particularly the loss of a job, had a major effect on increasing support for welfare spending. This effect was appreciably larger among Republicans than among Democrats, a result that was not simply due to a “ceiling effect.” However the large attitudinal shift was short lived, dissipating as individuals’ employment situations improved. The results indicate that the personal experience of an economic shock has a sizable, yet overall transient effect on voters’ social policy preferences.
With the post-industrialization and flexibilization of European labour markets, research on social and economic correlates of labour market vulnerability and weak labour market attachment is growing. Part of this literature conceptualizes these correlates in terms of dualization and insider–outsider divides in an attempt to explore their political implications: this article is written in order to contribute to this strand of research. In this article, we propose a conceptualization and measurement of labour market insiders and outsiders, based on their respective risk of being atypically employed or unemployed. We propose both a dichotomous measure of insiders/outsiders and a continuous measure of the degree of an individual’s ‘outsiderness’. We argue that such risk-based measures are particularly suited for research on the policy preferences and political implications of insider–outsider divides. On the basis of EU-SILC and national household panel data, we provide a map of dualization across different countries and welfare regimes. We then explore the correlates of labour market vulnerability – that is, outsiderness – by relating it to indicators of income and upward job mobility, as well as labour market policy preferences. The results consistently confirm an impact of labour market vulnerability, indicating a potential for a politicization of the insider/outsider conflict.