Welfare Attitudes and Social Expenditure: Do Regimes Shape Public Opinion?

This article examines the link between regime types, social expenditure, and welfare attitudes. By employing data on 19 countries taken from the World Values Survey, the main aim is to see to what degree the institutions of a country affect the attitudes of its citizens. According to Esping-Andersen (The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Polity Press, Cambridge, 1990) welfare regimes can be classified into Liberal, Conservative, and Social Democratic categories. With this as my point of departure, I put forward two research questions: the first concerns the direct influence of regime type on people?s attitudes; the second seeks to trace the contours of the regime types by arguing that both social expenditure and welfare attitudes are products of a country?s institutional arrangements. These questions are answered through regression modelling and by examining the interplay between welfare attitudes, social expenditure, and welfare regimes.