Waiting for Godot? Welfare Attitudes in Portugal Before and After the Financial Crisis

TY - JOUR

T1 - Waiting for Godot?

T2 - Welfare Attitudes in Portugal Before and After the Financial Crisis

AU - Brito-Vieira, Monica Alexandra

AU - Carreira da Silva, Filipe

AU - Pereira, Cícero Roberto

N1 - © 2016, The Author(s). This is an author-produced version of the published paper. Uploaded in accordance with the publisher’s self-archiving policy. Further copying may not be permitted; contact the publisher for details. Mónica Brito Vieira is a Lecturer in Political Theory in the Department of Politics University of York. She has a PhD from the University of Cambridge and is the author of two monographs, The Elements of Representation in Hobbes (2009) and (with David Runciman) Representation (2008). She has published a monograph, The Constituent Moment (2010) and articles on constitutionalized social rights.

PY - 2017/10/1

Y1 - 2017/10/1

N2 - Do attitudes towards the welfare state change in response to economic crises? Addressing this question is sometimes difficult because of the lack of longitudinal data. This article deals with this empirical challenge using survey data from the 2008 European Social Survey and from our own follow-up survey of Spring 2013 to track welfare attitudes at the brink and at the peak of the socio-economic crisis in one of the hardest hit countries: Portugal. The literature on social policy preferences predicts an increased polarization in opinions towards the welfare state between different groups within society – in particular between labour market insiders and outsiders. However the prediction has scarcely been tested empirically. A notoriously dualized country, Portugal provides a critical setting in which to test this hypothesis. The results show attitudinal change and this varies according to labour market vulnerability. However, we observe no polarisation and advance alternative explanations for why this is so.

AB - Do attitudes towards the welfare state change in response to economic crises? Addressing this question is sometimes difficult because of the lack of longitudinal data. This article deals with this empirical challenge using survey data from the 2008 European Social Survey and from our own follow-up survey of Spring 2013 to track welfare attitudes at the brink and at the peak of the socio-economic crisis in one of the hardest hit countries: Portugal. The literature on social policy preferences predicts an increased polarization in opinions towards the welfare state between different groups within society – in particular between labour market insiders and outsiders. However the prediction has scarcely been tested empirically. A notoriously dualized country, Portugal provides a critical setting in which to test this hypothesis. The results show attitudinal change and this varies according to labour market vulnerability. However, we observe no polarisation and advance alternative explanations for why this is so.

KW - welfare state; welfare attitudes; 2008 financial crisis; Portugal; social rights

U2 - 10.1177/0032321716651653

DO - 10.1177/0032321716651653

M3 - Article

SN - 0032-3217

SP - 1

EP - 24

JO - Political Studies

JF - Political Studies

ER -