Public Sector Employment and Support for the Welfare State : A multilevel assessment of 15 advanced capitalist countries

Abstract: The development and longevity of the welfare state is dependent on public support. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between public sector employment and popular support for the welfare state in comparative perspective. Welfare state attitudes represent the micro-foundation in many theories about links between welfare state organization and interest formation and the shaping of values, norms and levels of aspiration. Most studies seeking to explain differences in welfare state support use welfare state regime labels on countries as their independent variable. However, previous empirical research on comparative welfare state attitudes has found very mixed support using the regime typology approach. The present study takes a step forward in using comparative indicators of public sector employment and social protection, instead of regime labels. In previous research the role of public sector employment for welfare state attitudes has typically been given little attention. The main hypothesis is that public service employment positively influences aggregate levels of support towards the welfare state. Based on a multilevel-regression framework and drawing on ISSP comparative data from 2006 on individual level attitudes, this study demonstrates clear empirical support for this main hypothesis.