This project deals with the cultural explanation of socio-political developments. In spite of their obvious fruitfulness, cultural approaches are always suspected to be tautological. Therefore, it has to be explicated how this peril can be minimised. The fruitfulness of a thus controlled cultural explanation will be demonstrated for three areas of social policy research (the acceptance or popular support of welfare institutions, attitudes to inequality and distribution, and the phenomenon of welferisation). The study will be based on a reexamination of international literature and on secondary analyses (esp. of ALLBUS- and ISSP-data).
