Economic Inequality Representations in a Liberal, Conservative, and Social Democratic European Welfare Regimes

Background: Objective measures of economic inequality exhibit weak and mixed relationships with demands for redistribution (Zmerli, 2019; Willis et al., 2022). State-of-the-art research suggests that in advanced welfare states, where the personal benefits of redistributive policies are regularly uncertain and diffuse, people rely on cues in their rhetorical environment to determine what they consider 'fair' and to promote positive representations of themselves within the social order (Cavaille, 2023; Wichowsky & Condon, 2020; Willis et al., 2022). We enhance functional models by: (1) connecting the contents of economic inequality representations to alternative moral norms embedded in ideal welfare types; (2) linking media analyses of inequality with communications from elite political actors; (3) exploring ambiguities in political rhetoric that allow the public to both affirm and deny the need for redistribution. Methods: We qualitatively explore economic inequality representations in UK's Liberal, France's Conservative, and Sweden's Social Democratic welfare moral regimes. A generative approach is taken to corpora construction. We have analyzed 20 years of party programs from the main parties in each country. Semantics identified as key to the representation of economic inequality in party programs, such as identity-emotion configurations (e.g., dignity), perceived groups (e.g., benefit frauds), and policy solutions (e.g., pension triple lock), guide the selection of further research materials. These include parliamentary debates, political social media (e.g., X (formerly known as Twitter)), think tanks, online/print media, news aggregators, and podcasts, a process supported by main body keyword searches in aggregators relevant to political communication (e.g., Lexis Nexis, Hansard). Theories of themata (Markova, 2023), defined as dialogical units ingrained in culture (e.g., Moral/Immoral), enable an exploration into the rhetorical ambivalences. To identify themata, we iteratively progressed through open, axial, and selective coding (Joffe, 2011), paying close attention to possible latent representations, as suggested through the selected use of metaphors, symbols, and group identifiers, while also considering selective absences. Coding and corpus construction progressed in parallel, concluding when the underlying units of representation were fully described, achieving theoretical rather than data saturation (Joffe, 2011). Attention to themata makes three key methodological-theoretical innovations relevant to the research aims: (1) as themata are relational, they provide a structure to qualitatively describe coexisting tensions in representations (i.e., statements that both affirm and deny the need for redistribution); (2) they facilitate an understanding of how identity representations (Self/Other) are embedded in political communication, shaping the affective embodiments of public opinion (Markova, 2023); (3) they provide a common structure to describe within- and between-country similarities and differences in the development of economic inequality representations. For example, within a common Harm/Protect thema, in France, debates centered on those harmed by pension reform. In contrast, in the liberal UK, discussions focus on the harms experienced by morally valued groups due to exposure to those at the income extremes (e.g., the homeless). Conclusion: Our research project advances functional models of public opinion, delving into the unique and ambiguous political rhetoric within the Liberal, Conservative, and Social Democratic welfare regimes to better understand the intricate factors shaping public opinion.