How Workfare Shapes Social Solidarity: Cross-National Trends in Workfare and Public Opinion Since the 1980s

The paper investigates the effects of ‘workfare’ reforms on social solidarity and support for the welfare state. Many scholars have pointed to the importance of the shift away from traditional welfare programmes toward so-called ‘workfare’ policies, which place an increased emphasis on conditions and obligations for unemployed persons who want to draw on benefits. Yet there have been few systematic studies of these reforms, and no existing study has analysed the effect of these reforms on public opinion in a cross-national context. In light of work suggesting that there is a reciprocal relationship between social policy reforms and preferences, this is a major shortcoming. We therefore set out to study the impact of workfare reforms on public opinion and examine the national- and individual-level factors shaping these relationships. To do so, we developed a new measure of workfare reform – the ‘workfare balance’ – that measures the rights and obligations of unemployment benefit recipients. We then coded thousands of laws to assemble a comprehensive and nuanced new database on enabling and punitive workfare reforms across 15 OECD countries from 1990 to 2018. This unique workfare balance database allows us to go beyond the existing country-specific studies on the effects of workfare reforms on social solidarity and support for the welfare state. We then make use of these data in multi-level analyses, examining four waves of survey data from the World Values Survey and European Values Study alongside changes in workfare balances. Overall, results from this analysis suggest that individuals express more lenient attitudes toward the unemployed in country-waves where the enabling tally is higher. The punitive tally, in turn, only has a visible effect on the unemployed. Results thus offer important insights into the asymmetrical attitudinal consequences of enabling and punitive workfare reforms.