Search results

Addresses the effect that institutional settings typical to the Nordic countries have upon people's attitudes and behaviour. Placed within a European comparative perspective, this work focuses on issues relating to the welfare state, politics, family and work, as well as cultural concerns including economic morality and religiosity

What happens to the legitimacy of the Scandinavian model of the welfare state within the context of post-industrial development and the growth of the middle classes? Theoretically, two rival hypotheses can be posed. According to the saturation approach, the legitimation of the welfare state collapses. As general welfare increases, people adopt more individualistic stances toward the welfare state. By contrast, the irreversibility theory of the welfare state suggests that the legitimacy of the welfare state even improves as more people are employed by the welfare state and as all citizens are covered by its services. These hypotheses are tested empirically by using recent Finnish opinion survey data and by employing structural equation methods. At least in Finland, the irreversibility approach clearly gets more support than the rival saturation hypothesis. The results show that the middle classes are neither overly individualist nor critical of the Finnish welfare state.

In this article we focus on the level of subjective well-being and its determinants among the unemployed as compared to those currently in paid labour. We subject three strongly contradictory theoretical approaches to an empirical test. The first is the traditional deprivation theory, which maintains that unemployment is a major psychological stressor. The second is the incentive theory, which claims that the level of well-being among the unemployed may be sufficiently high to discourage them from actively and effectively searching for a new job and re-entering the labour market. The third approach emphasizes the adverse effects of financial stress for subjective well-being during unemployment. We use the European Social Survey (ESS) data from 21 countries in our empirical analysis. We find no support for the incentive theory. The deprivation theory points in the right direction by stressing the psychological factors associated with unemployment but makes a notable omission by disregarding the financial strain which, according to our analysis, proves to be crucial for the well-being of the unemployed.

Abstract. Institutional pension policy is held to be one of the trade marks of the celebrated Scandinavian model. Universal national pensions guarantee a decent livelihood to every citizen irrespective of socio‐economic status. Income‐related pensions that are paid on top of the national pensions secure the standard of living achieved during the working career. This Scandinavian institutionalism has usually been associated with long‐lasting working class hegemony, consolidated by the deliberate goal of abolishing means‐testing from national pensions and expanding the scope and quality of income‐related pensions. However, some studies challenge this interpretation. Instead, they emphasize the crucial role played by the middle classes. By using survey data from Finland, this study seeks to determine which socio‐economic groups are in favour of the present Finnish pension policy model characterized by universal basic pensions and income‐graduated work‐merit pensions. The results show that workers and farmers are more willing to introduce means‐testing and flat‐rate pensions than white‐collar workers. Correspondingly, these groups are more sceptical of income‐graduated benefits. Middle classes, especially upper white‐collar workers, support income graduated benefits and are more reluctant than workers and farmers to introduce means‐tested or flat‐rate pensions. Thus, the results indicate that the support for the present institutional pension policy model in Finland is strongest among the middle strata. But the results also indicate that this support is greatly dependent on benefit form, and when debating on the class basis of the Scandinavian universalism, we must be more explicit in specifying which aspects of universalism are at stake.

Institutional pension policy is held to be one of the trade marks of the celebrated Scandinavian model. Universal national pensions guarantee a decent livelihood to every citizen irrespective of socio-economic status. Income-related pensions that are paid on top of the national pensions secure the standard of living achieved during the working career. This Scandinavian institutionalism has usually been associated with long-lasting working class hegemony, consolidated by the deliberate goal of abolishing means-testing from national pensions and expanding the scope and quality of income-related pensions. However, some studies challenge this interpretation. Instead, they emphasize the crucial role played by the middle classes. By using survey data from Finland, this study seeks to determine which socio-economic groups are in favour of the present Finnish pension policy model characterized by universal basic pensions and income-graduated work-merit pensions. The results show that workers and farmers are more willing to introduce means-testing and flat-rate pensions than white-collar workers. Correspondingly, these groups are more sceptical of income-graduated benefits. Middle classes, especially upper white-collar workers, support income graduated benefits and are more reluctant than workers and farmers to introduce means-tested or flat-rate pensions. Thus, the results indicate that the support for the present institutional pension policy model in Finland ist strongest among the middle strata. But the results also indicate that this support is greatly dependent on benefit form, and when debating on the class basis of the Scandinavian universalism, we must be more explicit in specifying which aspects of universalism are at stake. (European Journal of Political Research / AuD)

Focusing on 2002–2011, we analyse levels of trust in Greece and compare them with 17 other European countries. During this period, Greece endured a serious economic crisis. Signs of increasing mistrust in all societal institutions became evident and the nation witnessed extreme phenomena, such as violent demonstrations, the surfacing of radical political ideas, parties with nationalistic and racist characteristics, and noncompliance with rules, regulations, and taxes. However, little is known about generalised social trust, i.e. interpersonal trust between individuals, during the crisis. We analyse data from the European Social Survey Rounds 1, 2, 4, and 5 to test whether the crisis affected the levels of various forms of trust among Greeks. In addition to social trust, we distinguish between trust in political institutions (e.g. politicians and the national parliament) and impartial institutions (e.g. the police and legal system). The results reveal that the level of trust people show towards political and impartial institutions decreased substantially in Greece. Surprisingly, however, interpersonal social trust did not collapse; rather, it remained stable or even slightly increased concurrently with the notable decrease in political trust. This suggests that during an economic crisis, people do not deterministically lose their trust in other individuals; instead, in the Greek case they appear to lean on each other when both political and impartial institutions fail. Moreover, it is possible that shared experiences of nearly overwhelming adversities in Greece during the crisis increase a sense of togetherness among individuals, which in turn contributed to the robustness of social trust. ; published version ; peerReviewed