Popular Support for Welfare State Reforms: On Welfare State Preferences and Welfare State Reforms in the Netherlands

The aim of this research is to better understand what is meant by general support for the welfare state. At the start of this study, I observed an alleged discrepancy between people’s preferences and welfare state policies. Whereas on the one hand various studies demonstrate that public support for generous welfare state arrangements remained high or in some countries increased across time, actual policy designs changed in the opposite direction and became increasingly sober and conditional. This mismatch between preferences and welfare state transformations has led me to research in detail wh... Mehr ...