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Cooperation for Social Protection

Explaining Variation in Welfare Programs

University of Göteborg

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.

American Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 45, No. 5, 901-918 (2002)
DOI: 10.1177/0002764202045005010


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