Political participation in European welfare states: does social investment matter?

ABSTRACT

The role of the welfare state has expanded beyond passive assistance and decommodificaton. In many countries, social investment policies now actively encourage (re)integration into the labour market. While the effectiveness of these policies is debated, we know even less about their broader social and political effects. In this contribution, we explore the impact of social investment policies on one key aspect of social life: political participation. Combining insights from social psychology with institutional analysis, we investigate the impact of three social investment policies (early childhood education, secondary education, active labour market policies) on two disadvantaged groups: young individuals from low-skill backgrounds; and single parents. Combining the European Social Survey with data on social investment, we find that these risk groups have reduced political efficacy and political participation. Social investment policies can alleviate these participation gaps in some cases, but not all.

KEY WORDS:

• Efficacy
• new social risk
• political participation
• social investment
• welfare state

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Paul Marx is professor of comparative political sociology at the University of Southern Denmark.

Christoph Giang Nguyen is post-doctoral researcher at the Free University of Berlin.

Notes

1 Given the enormous importance of education and age for participation, the latter category certainly is one of the most problematic with regard to political engagement. Single motherhood is an important and growing risk factor for experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage in post-industrial societies, which is why it plays a prominent role in the SI literature. An advantage of both groups is that they are measured based on fundamental socio-structural characteristics that are not endogenous to countries’ social policy approach (the risk of long-term unemployment should, for instance, depend on whether or not a SI approach is in place). However, there certainly are other disadvantaged groups whose involvement could benefit from SI and which we cannot cover in this article.

2 Internal political efficacy can be defined as citizens’ subjective assessments about their ability to influence politics, which is usually seen as an important prerequisite for political participation. We include this aspect of political involvement, because it provides a plausible psychological mechanism linking social problems and participation (Marx and Nguyen 2016). This is not to suggest that other aspects, such as external efficacy, are irrelevant.

3 Specifically, we cover Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, The Czech Republic, Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Spain, Finland, France, Great Britain, Greece, Croatia, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxemburg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Sweden, Slovenia and Slovakia.

4 We use mutually exclusive and jointly sufficient categorical variables to allow for easier interpretation and representation of the results. However, using three-way interactions yields equivalent results.

5 For the full results that cover the moderation effects of SI policies on all age-skill groups, please consult the Appendix.