Retrenched, but Still Desired? Perceptions Regarding the Social Legitimacy of the Welfare State in Russia Compared with EU Countries

Abstract

This article explores how the retrenchment of the Russian welfare state has affected Russians’ attitudes towards it. Using European Social Survey data, we find that the retrenchment has not eroded Russians’ strong preference for a comprehensive system, despite their dissatisfaction with its outcomes. Further, we find that in Russia, some of the individual socioeconomic characteristics have a different effect on people's attitudes to social welfare compared to equivalent groups in EU countries. Overall, as in the EU, attitudes are multidimensional: a positive stance towards some aspects of the welfare state coexists with a critical approach towards others.

The authors would like to express special gratitude to Michael Ochsner and Laura Ravazzini for preparing the dataset and imputing the missing data; also to Bart Meuleman and Martin Lukac for their methodological advice. This work was supported by Flemish Research Foundation (FWO) grant number G.0D67.15N ERA-NET RUS plus JTC2014.

Notes

1 The benefit can only be used for a child's education, to top up a mother's pension account or to purchase housing (Cook 2013).

2 ‘Brief Information on Execution of the Consolidated Budget of the Russian Federation’, Ministry of Finance of the Russian Federation, 2017, available at: http://old.minfin.ru/en/statistics/conbud/execute/?id_4=25648, accessed 13 May 2017.

3 ‘Highest to Lowest—Prison Population Rate’, World Prison Brief, International Centre for Prison Studies, 2017, available at: http://www.prisonstudies.org/highest-to-lowest/prison_population_rate?field_region_taxonomy_tid=All, accessed 13 July 2017.

4 The north includes Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden; the south, Cyprus, Greece, Portugal and Spain; the east, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia; the west, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. For each of these countries, a probability-based sample of at least 1,200 respondents aged 15 years and older was interviewed, adding up to 47,489 respondents. In Russia 2,512 respondents were interviewed. We do not include Israel, Turkey and Ukraine in the descriptive analysis because we use the EU countries as a benchmark. While Norway and Switzerland are not part of the EU, in terms of economic development and welfare state, they are very similar to the EU countries of Northern and Western Europe respectively. Lithuania is excluded because the dataset does not contain design weights and therefore does not allow to correct for the fact that different categories of respondents had different probabilities of being interviewed. Austria was excluded since the survey there was conducted a year later than in other countries.

5 For example, the three-fold typology of welfare regimes developed by Esping-Andersen (1990).

6 For variables making up the welfare preference index, the Cronbach's alpha score was 0.83; for welfare evaluation –0.7; for positive social consequences –0.78; for negative moral consequences –0.89. For the two variables measuring the negative economic consequences of welfare provision, the Cronbach's alpha score was 0.65, which indicates a questionable consistency.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Wim van Oorschot

Wim Van Oorschot, Centre for Sociological Research (CESO), Team Social Policy and Social Work, KU Leuven, Parkstraat 45, Post Box 3601, Leuven 3000, Belgium. Email: [email protected]

Dimitri Gugushvili

Dimitri Gugushvili, Centre for Sociological Research (CESO), Team Social Policy and Social Work, KU Leuven, Parkstraat 45, Post Box 3601, Leuven 3000, Belgium.