Year: 2010
Type: article
Abstract: Why have different industrialized capitalist market economies developed such\nvarying systems for social protection and social insurance? The hitherto most\nsuccessful theory for explaining this is the Power Resource Theory (PRT), according\nto which the generosity of the welfare state is a function of working class\nmobilization. In this paper we argue however that there is an undertheorized link in\nthe micro-foundations for PRT, namely why wage earners trying to handle the type of\nsocial risks and inequalities that are endemic for a market economy would turn to the\nstate for the solution Our complementary approach, the Quality of Government (QoG)\nTheory, stresses the importance of trustworthy, reliable, impartial and reasonably\nuncorrupted government institutions as a precondition for citizens' willingness to\nsupport policies for social insurance and redistribution. Drawing on time-series crosssectional\ndata on 18 OECD countries in 1984-2000, we find (a) that QoG positively\naffects the size and generosity of the welfare state, and (b) that the effect of working\nclass mobilization on welfare state generosity is increasing in the level of QoG.
Authors: Bo Rothstein, Marcus Samanni, Jan Teorell
Institutions: University of Gothenburg, Lund University
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W76512880