Public opinion and “vested” organized interests are seen as major obstacles to changing the status quo of welfare state policies. Radical or far-reaching reforms of welfare states are politically risky for governments, as they have to fear electoral backlash and opposition from influential interest groups. The project “Welfare State Support from Below” seeks to analyze the influence of non-governmental actors and public opinion on public policy making as well as the possible feedback processes of reforms on individual attitudes and collective interest strategies in selected social policy fields (employment, pension, and healthcare policies). By comparing European countries it analyses different institutional welfare state settings and interest intermediation systems in order to show the impact of varying contexts on the political economy of welfare state reform. With regard to the integrated research agenda of the planned SFB, this project focuses primarily on individual and corporate actors in major fields of social policy from comparative perspective and will especially contribute to the focus topics “reform-making preferences” as well as “reform expectations”, and “time horizons”.
