Kevins_motive_attribution_and_the_moral_politics_of_the_welfare_state.pdf (633.53 kB)
Motive attribution and the moral politics of the welfare state
journal contribution
posted on 2019-10-15, 15:51 authored by Anthony KevinsAnthony Kevins, Alexander Horn, Carsten Jensen, Kees van KersbergenThis article explores the moral politics of the welfare state and the social conflicts that underlie them. We argue that existing research on the moralism of redistributive and social policy preferences is overly one-dimensional, with a longstanding concentration on attitudes toward welfare state beneficiaries. To widen our understanding of the phenomenon, we introduce the concept of motive attribution: that is, how people answer the question “what drives others to take the positions that they hold?” Doing so allows us to shift the subject of moralistic attitudes, with a move toward uncovering what citizens think of those who hold a given social policy stance. The article then lays out a first systematic overview of motive attributions using an original dataset built from nationally representative surveys conducted in ten Western democracies. Comparing responses across these countries, we draw out important cross-national differences in ascribed motives, including within welfare state regime types.
Funding
Independent Research Fund Denmark (4003-00013)
Aarhus University Research Foundation’s AU IDEAS programme
Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (Grant no. 750556)
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Politics and International Studies
Published in
Journal of Social PolicyVolume
49Issue
1Pages
145-165Publisher
Cambridge University Press (CUP)Version
- AM (Accepted Manuscript)
Rights holder
© Cambridge University PressPublisher statement
This is an Open Access Article. It is published by CUP under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 Unported Licence (CC BY). Full details of this licence are available at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Publication date
2019-03-13Copyright date
2020ISSN
0047-2794eISSN
1469-7823Publisher version
Language
- en