The welfare state can be seen as a measure of the social protection. A major finding within the comparative welfare state research is the differences in scope, institutionalization, and effectiveness against poverty between the institutionalized forms of social protection among the industrialized Western democracies. The major question in this article is, How can we understand and explain the causal mechanism between such institutions, social norms, and human behavior? A model is presented to show that if voters/taxpayers act out of self-interest, both a selective/minimal and an encompassing/universal welfare state are likely outcomes. The different outcomes cannot be explained by the importance of the ideology of ruling political parties or that citizens in these different countries have different basic values about social justice. Instead, the argument is that the puzzle why structurally similar countries vary so much in their systems of social protection can be solved by institutional theory.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Barr, N. (1992). Economic theory and the welfare state: A survey and interpretation. Journal of Economic Literature, 30, 741-803.
2.
Barry, B. (1990). The welfare state vs. the relief of poverty. Ethics, 100(3), 503-529.
3.
Baumol, W. J. (1965). Welfare economics and the theory of the state. London: Bell & Sons.
4.
Denzau, A. T. , & North, D. C. (1994). Shared mental models: Ideologies and institutions. Kyklos, 47, 3-31.
5.
Dowrick, S. (1996, November). Swedish economic performance and Swedish economic debate: A view from outside. Economic Journal, 106, 1772-1779.
6.
Dworkin, R. (1977). Taking rights seriously. London: Duckworth.
7.
Elster, J. (2000). Ulysses unbound: Studies in rationality, precommitment, and constraints. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
8.
Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
9.
Gerdtham, U. G. , & Löthgren, M. (1998). Health care system effects on cost efficiency in the OECD countries (Working Paper Series in Economics and Finance 247). Stockholm: Stockholm School of Economics.
10.
Goodin, R. E. (1988). Reasons for welfare: The political theory of the welfare state. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
11.
Gutman, A. (1990). Introduction. In A. Gutman (Ed.), Democracy and the welfare state (pp. 1-24). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
12.
Hadenius, A. (1986). A crisis of the welfare state?Uppsala, Sweden: Almqvist & Wiksell.
13.
Hedström, P. , & Swedberg, R. (1998). Social mechanisms: An introductory essay. In P. Hedström & R. Swedberg (Eds.), Social mechanisms: An analytical approach to social theory (pp. 1-31). New York: Cambridge University Press.
14.
Hermansson, J. (1990). Spelteorins nytta. Om rationalitet i politik och vetenskap [The use of game theory. On rationality in politics and science]. Uppsala, Sweden: Statsvetenskapliga föreningen.
15.
Kahneman, D. , & Tversky, A. (1996). On the reality of cognitive illusions. Psychological Review, 103(3), 582-591.
16.
Katz, M. B. (1989). The undeserving poor: From the war on poverty to the war on welfare. New York: Pantheon Books.
17.
Korpi, W. (1996). Eurosclerosis and the sclerosis of objectivity: On the role of values among economic policy experts. Economic Journal, 106(2), 439-456.
18.
Korpi, W. , & Palme, J. (1998). The paradox of redistribution and strategies of equality: Welfare state institutions, inequality, and poverty in the Western countries. American Sociological Review, 63(5), 661-687.
19.
Ledyard, J. O. (1995). Public goods: A survey of experimental research. In J. H. Kagel & A. E. Roth (Eds.), The handbook of experimental economics (pp. 1093-1099). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
20.
Levi, M. (1991). Are there limits to rationality. Achives Européennes de Sociologie, 32(1), 130-141.
21.
Levi, M. (1998). Consent, dissent, and patriotism. New York: Cambridge University Press.
22.
Lewin, L. (1991). Self-interest and public interest in Western politics. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.
23.
Mackie, G. (1998). All men are liars: Is democracy meaningless. In J. Elster (Ed.), Deliberative democracy (pp. 69-96). New York: Cambridge University Press.
24.
McFate, K. , Smeeding, T., & Rainwater, L. (1995). Markets and states: Poverty trends and transfer system effectiveness in the 1980s. In K. McFate, R. Lawson, & W. J. Wilson (Eds.), Poverty, inequality and the future of social policy: Western states in the new world order. New York: Russell Sage.
25.
Moene, K.-O. , & Wallerstein, M. (2001). Targeting and political support for welfare spending. The Economics of Governance, 2(1), 3-24.
26.
Mueller, D. C. (1989). Public choice II. New York: Cambridge University Press.
27.
Orbell, J. , & Dawes, R. M. (1991). A “cognitive miser” theory of cooperators' advantage. American Political Science Reveiw, 85(2), 515-528.
28.
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development . (1994). New orientations for social policy. Paris: Author.
29.
Ostrom, E. (1998). A behavioral approach to the rational choice theory of collective action. American Political Science Reveiw, 92(1), 1-23.
30.
Pencavel, J. (1986). Labor supply of men: A survey. In O. C. Ashenfelter & R. Layard (Eds.), Handbook of labor economics. Amsterdam: North-Holland.
31.
Platt, J. (1973). Social traps. American Psychologist, 28, 641-651.
32.
Putnam, R. D. (1993). Making democracy work: Civic traditions in modern Italy. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
33.
Putterman, L. , Roemer, J. E., & Silvestre, J. (1998). Does egalitarianism have a future. Journal of Economic Literature, 36, 861-902.
34.
Rawls, J. (1971). A theory of justice. New York: Oxford University Press.
35.
Rothstein, B. (1996). The social democratic state: The Swedish model and the bureaucratic problem of social reforms. Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh Press.
36.
Rothstein, B. (1998). Just institutions matter: The moral and political logic of the universal welfare state. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
37.
Sally, D. (1995). Conversation and cooperation in social dilemmas—A metaanalysis of experiments from 1958 to 1992. Rationality and Society, 7(1), 58-92.
38.
Salonen, T. (1993). Margins of welfare: A study of modern functions of social assistance. Lund, Sweden: Hällestad Press.
39.
Scholz, J. , & Lubell, M. (1998). Trust and taxpaying: Testing the heuristic approach to collective action. American Journal of Political Science, 42(2), 398-417.
40.
Scholz, J. T. (1998). Trust, taxes and compliance. In V. Braithwaite & M. Levi (Eds.), Trust & governance (pp. 135-166). New York: Russell Sage.
41.
Sen, A. (1982). Choice, welfare and measurement. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
42.
Svallfors, S. (1996). Välfärdsstatens moraliska ekonomi [The moral economy of the welfare state]. Umeå, Sweden: Borea Förlag.
43.
Svallfors, S. (1997). Worlds of welfare and attitudes to redistribution: A comparison of eight Western nations. European Sociological Review, 13(3), 283-304.
44.
Svallfors, S. (1998). Mellan risk och tilltro: Opinionsstödet för en kollektiv välfärdspolitik [Between risk and trust. Public opinion support for a collective welfare policy]. Umeå, Sweden: Umeå University.
45.
Titmuss, R. (1968). Commitment to welfare. London: Allen & Unwin.
46.
Tsebelis, G. (1990). Nested games: Rational choice in a comparative perspective. New York: Cambridge University Press.
47.
Tullock, G. (1983). Economics of income redistribution. Boston: Kluwer-Nijhoff.
48.
Tyler, T. R. (1998). Trust and democratic governance. In V. Braithwaite & M. Levi (Eds.), Trust & governance (pp. 269-314). New York: Russell Sage.
49.
Wacquant, L. (1998, July). Lémprisonnement de “classes dangereuse” aux Etats-Unis [The imprisonment of the “dangerous classes” in the United States]. Le Monde Diplomatique, pp. 21-22.
50.
Walzer, M. (1983). Spheres of justice. A defense of pluralism and justice. New York: Basic Books.
51.
Young, H. P. (1998). Individual strategy and social structure: An evolutionary theory of institutions. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
