Abstract
Abstract The article interconnects the research on welfare attitudes and welfare chauvinism with moral psychology in order to develop an interdisciplinary analytical approach designed for studying attitudes to welfare policies and potentially overcoming the divisions prevalent in many European democracies. It introduces Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) - an empirical approach to analysing intuitions, reasoning, and emotions constituting moral judgment - and outlines its understanding of competing versions of fairness and distributive justice. The potential contributions of MFT are exemplified on a case study situated in contemporary Slovakia which deals with two conflicting conceptions of fairness, as equity and as equality, embodied in the diverging attitudes towards an amendment to the Act on the Assistance in Material Need (2013). The article argues that MFT and related research programmes are irreplaceable components in an interdisciplinary study of the plurality of welfare policy attitudes. It also highlights the transformative potential of MFT and related research programmes in devising interventions aimed at changing (political) attitudes to welfare and reducing their polarisation.
Highlights
Attitudes to welfare policies divide populations in many European countries
The potential contributions of Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) are exemplified on a case study situated in contemporary Slovakia which deals with two conflicting conceptions of fairness, as equity and as equality, embodied in the diverging attitudes towards an amendment to the Act on the Assistance in Material Need (2013)
Keeping in mind that various above-mentioned scholars identified income inequality, religiosity, traditional ethical values, political ideology, and cleavages between religious and secular worldviews as powerful factors related to welfare attitudes, it might be revealing to find out whether these relationships can be further illuminated by moral psychological research and such findings can be effectively translated into impactful interventions
Summary
Attitudes to welfare policies divide populations in many European countries. The main aim of this article is to develop an interdisciplinary analytical approach to studying these polarising differences in public opinion and overcoming their destructive divisiveness, which can potentially fuel the agenda of extremist political programmes. Its useful analytical tools made it possible to approach the study of attitude formation, reproduction and change concerning welfare and social policy preferences in a systematic, comprehensive manner. It made operational the assumptions on reciprocity, as the main underlying characteristic of fairness, by relating them to a fair distribution of resources in various welfare regimes. I am going to argue that analysing the moral foundations of welfare attitudes and preferences, and especially equity and equality as the main competing versions of fairness, brings novel insights into the processes of constitution and reproduc-. In the last part of the article, I am going to introduce MFT’s potential added value – its yet-to-be-tested transformative potential in shifting policy attitudes (including ones toward welfare and redistribution) and in reducing the polarisation of policy preferences
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