Welfare state reform support from below: Linking individual attitudes and organised interests in Europe (A06)

• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: from 2010 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 139943784

Public opinion and "vested" organised interests are seen as major obstacles to restructuring social policies. The project analyzes the role of organized interests and public opinion in the reform process. It continues to study pensions, healthcare, and labour market policies, while adding family policy analysed in a life-course and gender perspective. Combining text analyses of organized interests’ press releases and multivariate analyses of survey data, it examines the changing reform preferences of collective and individual actors. By comparing Germany with other European countries, it shows how different welfare state and interest intermediation systems affect the political economy of reform.

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 884: Political Economy of Reforms
• Applicant Institution: Universität Mannheim
• Project Heads: Professor Dr. Bernhard Ebbinghaus, until 1/2017; Professorin Dr. Katja Möhring, since 1/2017; Professor Jörg Timo Weishaupt, Ph.D., until 2/2015