Attitudinal Consistency in Citizens’ Social Policy Preferences

Abstract

Studies of public opinion on welfare policies implement increasingly concrete and complex survey measures that frequently assume relative preferences on the part of respondents. Yet, we lack evidence on whether voters hold such structured attitudes toward welfare policies. We rely on novel survey data from eight West European countries to study horizontal attitudinal constraint in welfare policy preferences. Addressing both logical and relational consistency, we find that most respondents hold structured welfare belief systems and rel Show more