How welfare states shape the democratic public

About this book

'Welfare states do indeed shape the democratic public, but they do it in highly contingent and contextually dependent ways. This is the main message from this meticulously researched and lucidly presented volume. By showing how and under what conditions policy feedback takes place it makes a major contribution to the welfare state literature. A must-read for any scholar in the field.' - Stefan Svallfors, Umeå University, Sweden. 'This crucial volume significantly advances the study of policy feedbacks. With contributions from many subfields and methodological approaches, it offers both sophisticated theorizing and new empirical examples that show how policies make politics in a variety of ways. Innovative research designs provide more convincing inference than ever.^ And the normative questions engaged about welfare performance, evaluation, participation, and accountability could not be more important or timely in this era of austerity and discord over the future of welfare states.' - Andrea Louise Campbell, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, US. In democracies, the attitudes and behaviour of citizens should influence future public policies. Yet in some instances the reverse of this is true, and public attitudes and behaviour are in fact the result of past policies. Staffan Kumlin and Isabelle Stadelmann-Steffen bring together political scientists and sociologists from different and frequently separated research communities to examine policy feedback in European welfare states. In doing so, they offer a rich menu of methodological approaches. The book demonstrates how long-term policy legacies and short-term policy changes affect the public, but also shows that such processes are contingent on individual characteristics and political context.^ This comprehensive study will appeal to academics interested in political behaviour and attitudes, or in welfare state policy and its consequences for national societies and economies. It will also be of value to policy intellectuals and activists involved in the politics of the welfare state.