Values, Religiosity and Support for Redistribution and Social Policy in Turkey

Abstract

This paper investigates the individual level factors that influence support for social redistribution and social policy in Turkey by focusing on the role of core values and religiosity. The analysis of data from Round 4 of European Social Surveys shows that self-transcendence and conservation values enhance support for government provision of social safety nets. Different aspects of religiosity have different effects on attitudes toward redistribution and social policy, with self-identified religiosity having a positive and social religious behavior having a negative effect on support for government responsibility in providing social insurance.

Acknowledgements

I thank Emre Erdoğan, Cengiz Erişen, Elif Erişen, Kerem Ozan Kalkan, Ekrem Karakoç, Eser Şekercioglu and Çiğdem V. Şirin for their helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. All remaining errors are my responsibility.

Notes

Kulin and Svallfors, “Class, Values, and Attitudes,” 2.

See, for example, Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, “Does Ideology Matter?” 2009.

Erişen, “An Introduction to Political”.

Hasenfeld, and A. Rafferty, “The Determinants of Public Attitudes,” 1027–48; Svallfors, “Worlds of Welfare and Attitudes,” 283–304.

Hasenfeld and Rafferty, “The Determinants of Public Attitudes”; Iversen and Soskice, “An Asset Theory,” 875–95; Jaeger, “Welfare Regimes and Attitudes,” 157–70; Jaeger, “What Makes People Support,” 321–38; Linos and West, “Self-Interest, Social Beliefs,” 393–409.

Kinder, “Opinion and Action,” 778–867; Sears and Funk, “The Role of Self-Interest,” 1–91.

Feldman and Zaller, “The Political Culture of Ambivalence,” 268–307; Hasenfeld and Rafferty, “The Determinants of Public Attitudes”; Jaeger, “What Makes People Support”; Jacoby, “Public Attitudes Toward Government,” 336–61.

Bobbio, Left and Right, 60.

Arıkan, Economic Individualism and Cross-National; Arıkan and Ben-Nun Bloom, “Social Values and Attitudes Towards,” 2012; Jaeger, “What Makes People Support.”

Fong, “Social Preferences, Self-Interest,” 225–46.

Corneo and Grüner, “Individual Preferences for Political,” 83–107.

Alesina and Ferrera, “Preferences for Redistribution in the Land,” 897–931.

Economic individualism is argued to be an important value orientation that discourages support for extensive social welfare programs in the USA. See Feldman, “Economic Self-interest and Political,” 446–66; Lipset, American Exceptionalism; McCloskey and Zaller, The American Ethos. Economic individualism also predicts individual attitudes towards welfare policy and redistribution from a comparative perspective (Arikan, Economic Individualism and Cross-National). In addition, humanitarian values are associated with higher support for increased spending on social welfare services, while egalitarian values predict support for greater government involvement in providing a decent standard of living for the unemployed and reducing income differences. See Feldman and Steenbergen, “The Humanitarian Foundation of Public Support,” 658–77.

But see Arıkan, Economic Individualism and Cross-National; Kulin and Svallfors, “Class, Values, and Attitudes towards Redistribution.”

Geert Hosftede's individualism/collectivism values dimension has been used as a point of reference for many studies in cross-cultural psychology. Harry Triandis also adopted the individualism/collectivism dimension. Ronald Inglehart has proposed a two-dimensional values construct consisting of survival/self-expression and traditional/rational-secular values that could be applied to both individual and societal levels. See Hofstede, Culture's Consequences; Inglehart, Modernization and Post-Modernization; Triandis, Individualism and Collectivism.

Schwartz, “Universals in the Content and Structure,” 1–65; Schwartz, “Are There Universal Aspects,” 547–59. Also see Rokeach, The Nature of Human Values.

For a review, see Feldman, “Values, Ideology, and the Structure,” 477–508.

Rokeach, Beliefs, Attitudes, and Values; Rokeach, The Nature of Human Values.

Schwartz, “Universals in the Content and Structure of Values”; Schwartz, “Are There Universal Aspects”; Schwartz and Ros, “Values in the West,” 91–122.

Kulin and Svallfors, “Class, Values, and Attitudes.”

Titmuss, Social Policy, 27.

See, for example, Jacoby, “Public Attitudes Toward Government.”

See, for example, Feldman and Zaller, “The Political Culture of Ambivalence”, as well as Conover and Feldman, “The Origins and Meaning of Liberal/Conservative,” 617–45; Jacoby, “Public Attitudes Toward Government.”

Karen, The Authoritarian Dynamic, especially 86. See also Stenner, “Three Kinds of ‘Conservatism,’” 142–59.

Freeden, “The Coming of the Welfare State,” 7–44.

Rudra, “Welfare States in Developing Countries,” 378–96.

Huber, “Administering Targeted Social Programs,” 141–91; Rudra, “Welfare States in Developing Countries.”

In fact, despite the latest reforms that aim at shrinking the welfare state, there is evidence of an expansion of state power and control over social interests. Eder, “Retreating State? Political Economy,” 152–84.

Kellstedt, Green, and Smidt, “Is There a Culture War?” 1997; Wald and Smidt, “Measurement Strategies in the Study,” 26–52. While the third dimension of religiosity, belonging, consists of denominational affiliation, that is, identification as a member of a particular organized denomination, and/or religious movement identification, due to the unavailability of data on denominational or sectarian affiliation, I will not be able to elaborate on the belonging dimension.

Dekker and Halman, The Values of Volunteering.

Kotler-Berkowitz, “Religion and Voting Behaviour,” 523–54.

Çarkoğlu and Kalaycıoğlu, Turkish Democracy Today.

Ben-Nun Bloom and Arıkan, “The Differential Effect of Religious Belief,” 249–76; Ben-Nun Bloom and Arıkan, “Religion and Support for Democracy.”

Kellstedt Green, and Smidt, “Is There a Culture War?” 1997.

Wilson, Economics, Ethics and Religion.

Malka et al., “Religiosity and Social Welfare,” 763–92.

Davis and Robinson, “The Egalitarian Face of Islamic Orthodoxy,” 167–90.

Pepinsky and Welborne, “Piety and Redistributive Preferences,” 491–505.

Davis and Robinson, “The Egalitarian Face of Islamic Orthodoxy.”

Kellstedt Green, and Smidt, “Is There a Culture War?” 1997.

Scheve and Stasavage, “Religion and Preferences for Social Insurance,” 255–86.

Buğra and Keyder, New Poverty and the Changing, 2003.

See Pepinsky and Welborne, “Piety and Redistributive Preferences”, for a good review.

For more detailed information about sampling and fieldwork, see http://ess.nsd.uib.no/ess/round4/surveydoc.html.

For details, see http://ess.nsd.uib.no/ess/doc/ess1_human_values_scale.pdf.

Results are available upon request from the author.

These are conservation and self-transcendence values (r = 0.062), age and being retired (r = 0.48), being male and attendance to religious services (r = 0.52), and the others category in labor force participation (r = −0.62), and income and education (r = 0.5).

The highest VIF is 2.31, which is well below the suggested threshold of 5; and the lowest tolerance measure is 0.43, which is well above the threshold of 0.

Long, Regression Models for Categorical.

CLARIFY! software was used to calculate the predicted probabilities. King, Tomz, and Wittenberg, “Making the Most of Statistical Analyses,” 347–61.

Blekesaune, “Economic Conditions and Public,” 393–403.

Ben-Nun Bloom and Arıkan, “The Differential Effect of Religious”; Ben-Nun Bloom and Arıkan, “Religion and Support for Democracy.”

Norris, Democratic Phoenix; Putnam, Bowling Alone.

Donald Kinder, “Opinion and Action in the Realm.”

Ibid., p. 802.

Gingrich, “Visibility, Values and Voters,” 2012.

Mettler, The Submerged State.

Eder, “Retreating State?”

Huckfeldt et al., “Accessibility and the Political Utility,” 888–911.

Feldman, “Values, Ideology, and the Structure.”

Zaller, The Nature and Origins.

Jacoby, “Public Attitudes Toward Government.”

Jacoby, “Issue Framing and Public Opinion,” 750–67.

Secor, “Ideologies in Crisis,” 539–60.

Çarkoğlu, “The Nature of Left-Right,” 253–71.

Kalaycıoğlu, “Does Ideology Matter?” 2009.

Arıkan, “Attitudes Towards the European Union”; Çarkoğlu, “Who Wants Full Membership?” 171–94.

Erişen, “An Introduction to Political.”