The Democratic Welfare State: How Does the Welfare State Moderate Political Participation Gaps Between Labor Market Insiders and Outsiders?

This study investigates whether the welfare state can offset political participation gaps arising from post-industrial labor market transformation. While labor market dualization has been shown to undermine political engagement, the capacity of welfare states to moderate demobilization remains insufficiently understood. Building on the resource model of political participation and policy feedback theory, the study addresses this gap by arguing that employment conditions structure the access to material and civic resources, while welfare state arrangements, benefiting insiders and outsiders to differing extents over the course the post-industrial transition, condition how labor market dualization translates into political inequality. Using data from the European Social Survey (2012–2018), combined with macro-level indicators from the OECD, ILO, and EU-SILC, the analysis distinguishes between two dimensions of labor market dualization: a status-based divide between permanent and fixed-term workers, and a risk-based continuum capturing exposure to unemployment and atypical employment. Fixed-effects logistic and linear regression models, complemented by KHB decompositions, are employed to examine both conventional political participation (voting) and unconventional participation (e.g. protest, petitions, working in an organization, boycotts). The results demonstrate that dualization constitutes a significant axis of political inequality. Across both status- and risk-based measures, outsiders are less likely to turn out at the ballot box than insiders, yet one notable exception appears. For status-based outsiders, the expected wholesale retreat of temporary workers from political participation does not materialize for unconventional forms. The role of the welfare state matters, but is similarly ambivalent. Stricter Employment Protection Legislation tends to entrench insiders’ electoral advantage and, at the same time, dampens the modest unconventional mobilization of temporary workers that is visible in more flexible labor markets, reflecting the exclusionary effects of segmented labor market regulation. Welfare regimes, in turn, moderate the translation of heightened labor market risk into political withdrawal. Nordic welfare regimes, characterized by buffering outsiders against labor market risks through extensive social investment and broadly decommodifying policies, are far better at containing outsider demobilization. Whereas continental and liberal regimes exhibit markedly more pronounced political withdrawal as labor market risk intensifies, although these regime-specific gaps emerge only in the domain of conventional participation. Overall, the findings highlight the democratic function of the welfare state and their management of post-industrial transition, not only in shaping social inequality but also in laying the foundations for political inclusion.