The welfare state under strain: A comparative study of diversity, austerity and public opinion

我们的目标是更好地了解公众舆论对欧洲社会福利、国家机构和政策的变化的决定因素，以应对多样性和经济紧缩的压力。我们的目标是回答四个关键问题：(I)多样性对福利态度的影响是什么，这些影响是如何受到国家背景的影响？(Ii)紧缩对福利态度的影响是什么，这些影响如何与多样性的影响相互作用？这些影响是如何受到国家背景的影响的？(Iii)随着时间的推移，公众对福利的态度是如何变化的，政治信息和信使在推动这种变化中扮演了什么角色？这些变化和影响是如何受到国家背景的影响的？(Iv)多样性和紧缩的影响及其相互作用在多大程度上受到选民的政治意识形态、价值观和党派依恋的调节？在影响这些复杂的互动模式方面，国家背景扮演着什么角色？为了回答这些问题，我们计划在英国和荷兰进行一项为期30个月的五波比较小组研究。该小组将以一系列嵌入式调查实验为特色，旨在测试多样性、紧缩和各种主持人对政治态度的影响。这些实验将模仿媒体和有关福利政策的竞选内容，真实地反映选民在评估政策时接触到的材料类型。这两个国家将同时进行相同的实验，这将使我们能够第一次考察国家背景如何调节这些因素对民意的影响。我们还将通过反复调查相同的选民来捕捉随着时间的推移态度的变化，我们将通过在欧洲议会和国家选举之前和之后立即选择这些重复的调查浪潮来检查最强大的政治信息来源-选举活动-的影响。该项目产生的数据将公之于众，并将为研究界提供宝贵的资源：比较小组调查很少见，据我们所知，还没有人以我们提出的方式纳入同时进行的比较嵌入实验。

Our objective is to improve understanding of the changing determinants of public opinion towards welfare state institutions and policies in European societies in response to the pressures of diversity and economic austerity. We aim to answer four key questions:(i) What is the impact of diversity on welfare attitudes, and how are these influenced by national context?(ii) What is the impact of austerity on welfare attitudes, and how do these effects interact with the effects of diversity? How are these effects mediated by national context?(iii) How do public attitudes to welfare change over time, and what role do political messages and messengers play in driving this change? How are these changes and effects mediated by national context?(iv) To what extent are the effects of diversity and austerity, and their interaction, moderated by voters' political ideologies, values and partisan attachments? What role does national context play in influencing these complex patterns of interaction? To answer these questions, we plan to conduct a 30 month, five wave comparative panel study in Britain and the Netherlands. The panel will feature a series of embedded survey experiments designed to test the impact of diversity, austerity, and various moderators on political attitudes. The experiments will be designed to mimic media and campaign content concerning welfare policies, realistically reflecting the kind of material voters are exposed to when assessing policies. Identical experiments will be conducted simultaneously in the two countries, which will enable us for the first time to examine how national context mediates the effects of these factors on public opinion. We will also capture attitude change over time by surveying the same voters repeatedly, and we will examine the impact of the most powerful source of political information - election campaigns - by timing these repeated survey waves before and immediately after European Parliament and national elections. The data generated by the project will be made publicly available and will provide a valuable resource to the research community: comparative panel surveys are rare, and to our knowledge none has ever incorporated simultaneous comparative embedded experiments in the manner we propose.