Weakly institutionalized, heavily contested: Does support for contemporary welfare reforms rely on norms of distributive justice?

Abstract

Three reforms each appealing to a different logic of (re)distribution are strongly politicized in contemporary welfare states: means-tested benefits, demanding activation policies and basic income schemes. While the policy design of means-tested benefits relies on the distributive justice principle of need, demanding activation policies are intrinsically related to the principle of equity and basic income schemes depend on equality. Based on the moral economy and policy feedback literatures, which assume that public opinion adapts to the normative conceptions of justice encapsulated by institutions, attitudes towards these welfare reforms are expected to be grounded on these distributive logics. However, as these reforms are weakly institutionalized and their underlying principles are politically contested, the normative foundation of their public support remains unclear. This study investigates how distributive justice preferences shape support for these proposals by applying structural equation modelling on data from the CRONOS panel linked to the European Social Survey round 8 (2016/2017). Results indicate that only basic income schemes and demanding activation policies are to some extent connected to each of the justice principles. Overall, this study nevertheless indicates that the justice principles have limited explanatory power, which confirms that attitudes towards contemporary welfare reforms rely weakly on justice norms.