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Introduction: Analysing Organized Interests and Public Opinion Towards Welfare Reforms

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Welfare State Reforms Seen from Below

Abstract

The status quo defence of organized interests and the reform unwillingness of public opinion are seen as the main reasons why welfare states persist. Building upon these two perspectives, this introduction develops an analytical approach to systematically study the role of organized interests and public opinion in the political economy of welfare state reform. It covers three important social policy areas (pension, healthcare, and labour market policies) and briefly maps the main institutional differences between our two country cases, Britain and Germany. Finally, it discusses the method mix applied in the nine empirical studies collected in this volume: ranging from qualitative to quantitative, from interview to text analysis, from cross-sectional micro-level data to survey experiments using online panels.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Bernhard Ebbinghaus

  2. SFB 884 “Political Economy of Reforms”, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Elias Naumann

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  1. Bernhard Ebbinghaus
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom

    Bernhard Ebbinghaus

  2. SFB 884 “Political Economy of Reforms”, University of Mannheim, Mannheim, Germany

    Elias Naumann

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Ebbinghaus, B., Naumann, E. (2018). Introduction: Analysing Organized Interests and Public Opinion Towards Welfare Reforms. In: Ebbinghaus, B., Naumann, E. (eds) Welfare State Reforms Seen from Below. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63652-8_1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63652-8_1

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

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