Two Sides of the Same Coin: Welfare State Dimensions and Support for Democracy.

Democracies are not sustainable without the mass support of their citizens. If citizens no longer hold democratic values, democratic political systems will be at risk. Among other factors, scholars have underscored the relevance of institutional performance for its legitimacy. In this sense, the welfare state is a key performance indicator, as it has a direct impact on citizens’ economic and social well-being. High levels of welfare are often assumed to create a sense of protection and care among citizens that eventually shape democratic legitimacy. In contrast, this paper argues that different welfare states may lead to opposite outcomes conditional on their design. On the one hand, universalistic welfare designs tend to increase democratic support because they create a sense of egalitarianism that avoids redistributive conflicts among citizens. On the other hand, welfare designs based on means-tested programs and low-income targeting strategies tend to promote a zero-sum game in which average citizens perceive the political system as unfair and inefficient, leading to the withdrawal of support. The paper combines aggregate data on welfare design from the Luxembourg Income panel with individual data from the Integrated Value Survey to test these expectations through a hierarchical research design. Preliminary results support the idea that welfare states not only affect individual support for democracy but also that different welfare designs may lead to opposing paths. This paper contributes to the literature on institutional causes of public opinion by showing how different welfare designs may affect democratic legitimacy in various ways.