Book Review: Christian Albrekt Larsen (2006) The Institutional Logic of Welfare Attitudes: How Welfare Regimes Influence Public Support. Aldershot: Ashgate, ISBN-13 978—0—7546—4857—4 (hbk), £45
| DOI | 10.1177/0952076708093252 |
| Author | David Watson |
| Date | 01 October 2008 |
| Published date | 01 October 2008 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Book Reviews
Christian Albrekt Larsen (2006)
The Institutional Logic of Welfare Attitudes: How Welfare Regimes
Influence Public Support
Aldershot: Ashgate, ISBN-13 978–0–7546–4857–4 (hbk), £45.
This book is original in searching for the ‘missing link or the intervening vari-
ables’ (p. 2) between macro welfare systems and the micro attitudes of the public
to those in receipt of welfare. As the author states, this is an area of empirical
research that has rarely been considered. The reason for this lack of research, as
Larsen identifies, is that the overall data available on welfare attitudes is limited,
it is effected by many cross-national differences and given we are looking at
macro–micro relationships it is ‘a fuzzy place’. It is a huge task that Larsen takes
on to try and overcome the aforementioned difficulties. However, it is a task he
faces with both imagination and considerable academic rigour as he systematic-
ally develops a framework based on welfare regime and ‘deservingness’ theory.
The argument developed by Larsen is systematically built up piece-by-piece
across each chapter as he funnels his argument from the general to the specific.
This enables the reader to understand the wider debates around comparative
welfare and then to follow the reasoning behind Larsen’s framework, which is
tested out using a range of exciting and new empirical data from the World Value
Survey, Euro Barometer Survey, the International Social Survey Programme
(including specifically looking at the Danish sample) and the Nordic Citizenship,
Marginalisation and Unemployment Data.
Chapter 2 introduces the reader to welfare regime theory and in particular the
work of Esping-Andersen (1990), who postulates that western countries can be
clustered around three ideal type of welfare regime: Social Democratic (the
Nordic states), Liberal Welfare (Anglo Saxon) and Conservative (Continental
DOI: 10.1177/0952076708093252 409
© Public Policy and Administration
SAGE Publications Ltd
Los Angeles, London, New Delhi
and Singapore
0952-0767
200810 23(4) 409–420
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