Exploring the Culture—Welfare Nexus: A Quantitative Comparative Analysis

Abstract

In this chapter we report findings from a series of regression models exploring how far the cultural context helps us to understand cross-national variations in social policy making provision. Our models treat culture as one aspect of the context for social policy; while we include our examples of societal values as key independent variables in our regression models we also include indicators that aim to capture the economic, political and historical-institutional (welfare regime) context of policy making. Our quantitative analysis provides good support for the ‘culture matters’ thesis particularly when exploring ‘old social risks’. However, we also note some limitations inherent in our approach, particularly when exploring ‘new social risks’, and point to the value of supplementing our regression analyses with complementary approaches.