Table Of ContentMyths, Narratives and Welfare States
Myths, Narratives and
Welfare States
The Impact of Stories on Welfare State
Development
Bent Greve
Professor of Welfare State Analysis, Department of Social
Sciences and Business, Roskilde University, Denmark
Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA
© Bent Greve 2020
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A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020948603
This book is available electronically in the
Social and Political Science subject collection
http://dx.doi.org/10.4337/9781839107924
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ISBN 978 1 83910 792 4 (eBook)
Contents
Preface vi
1 Myths, narratives and welfare states: an introduction 1
2 Key concepts 15
3 Welfare states’ development 30
4 Understanding of the behaviour of the unemployed: stories
of laziness 44
5 Migrants take our jobs and use and misuse the welfare system 60
6 Do people know the size of the benefits? 75
7 Pressure on services: the austerity and retrenchment debate 85
8 Understanding of equality and deservingness 94
9 Technological unemployment – it takes our jobs 103
10 Lowering of taxes will make everyone richer 112
11 It should pay to work 120
12 Conclusions: ways forward for the welfare states 129
Index 135
v
Preface
We are all influenced by stories and different narratives. We remember the
good stories and sometimes narratives that are not true or where there is so
much exaggeration that the story bears little resemblance to reality.
Myths can be used to tell something about how things should be interpreted.
But myths can also be used to create desires for change in the direction
a person would like it to be. One consequence may be that changes are made
for which there is no professional justification, but to a greater extent are
embedded in ideas or ideological positions, including in relation to this book
the development of welfare states.
The ambition of the book is to analyse whether and how a number of narra-
tives and myths have, and can be assumed to have, influenced the development
of welfare states in a number of key areas over the past 10–15 years. The time
frame is chosen because it captures a number of changes in the aftermath of
the 2007–2008 financial crisis, but also some of the changes in societies, such
as the large movements of refugees and labour in Europe.
I hope that the book can contribute to a clearer understanding of the mech-
anisms and changes in European welfare states through a view that narratives
also have an impact, although that impact does not have to be as great as some
might have hoped for. The book looks at a number of myths and narratives, and
analytically examines whether they form part of the public as well as academic
debate, and whether it is possible that some of the changes in European welfare
states in particular are a consequence of the narratives.
I am grateful for the reviews and comments that have helped to make the
book more comprehensive. Of course, any mistakes and omissions are my
responsibility alone.
I completed the book in a period where uncertainty prevails at many levels.
It has not been possible to integrate this into the book.
Roskilde og Bagsværd, August, 2020
vi
1. Myths, narratives and welfare states:
an introduction
1.1 INTRODUCTION
The development of welfare states is often portrayed by looking into issues
of spending, replacement rate and conditionality of social benefits. Change
related to the legitimacy of and political preferences – from right to left and
opinions – on the role of the state and the need for state intervention is also
often examined. It is argued that welfare states have, with variations over time
and between countries, been in crisis since at least the beginning of the 1980s
(OECD 1981). Part hereof was a negative view on the ability of Keynesian
demand management to solve economic problems, including high levels of
unemployment, economic stagnation and inflation. At the same time, there has
been the perception of a stronger influence from monetary and liberal economic
ideas, again with variations across welfare states. In the wake of the financial
crisis, austerity, retrenchment and the impact on welfare states’ development
have also been discussed extensively, including with reference to issues such
as welfare chauvinism and populism, but also whether, in fact, there has been
austerity in all welfare states (see for details Greve 2019, 2020a).
One could perhaps argue that the development in welfare states is not only
influenced by development in economic options, but presumably also by
the myths about who gets what in the different welfare states, or to put it in
another way, the narratives of how welfare states work, function and fulfil
the goals of welfare states. This is in line with recent research, for example,
within economics (Shiller 2019). Narratives are often used in analysis with
a more qualitative approach, where the narrative, for example, can represent
the perspective of users and/or workers in welfare states. It can also represent
those paying for welfare, and those not getting what they expected to get.
Self-interest can also be part of the support or not for spending in welfare states
or at least part hereof (Laenen 2018). Myth and narratives may have caused
a change in welfare states’ legitimacy. Analysis has therefore looked into
people’s perception of how the welfare state functions, the level of support to
different policy areas (such as high levels for health, pensions and long-term
care) often being framed as part of a classical discussion on deservingness.
1
2 Myths, narratives and welfare states
However, as deservingness cannot theoretically be defined, as is the case for
another often used concept “need”, this raises the question of how narratives
of the way in which societies function might have an impact on welfare states’
development. Labels such as welfare queens, scroungers and skivers indicate
part of the debates on the possible impact on welfare states’ development of
narratives (Jurado and Brochmann 2013; Cromby and Willis 2014). This can
also be reflected in the understanding of how different kinds of myths have
an impact on how policy makers make decisions. Different myths and their
possible impact on welfare states’ development will be the continuous theme
throughout the book. This can also be related to what is called the Thomas
theorem “that if people define situations as real, then they are real in their
consequences” (Svallfors 2012, 26).
Overall, the book thus presents a number of myths about welfare states, and
further raises the question of whether different myths and narratives have or
have had an impact on welfare states’ development. This is not necessarily
on overall development, but on change in their structure and composition. It
will analyse a number of these myths after having first discussed the central
concepts to be used in the book. The data used in the book include a number
of surveys. For example, the European Social Survey (2018 data)1 includes
a question on whether immigrants make a country better or worse, and the
survey from round 8 in 2016 has data on welfare attitudes and fairness. The
European Quality of Life Survey (2016) includes questions related to trust,
perception of social exclusion, social cohesion and so on. The World Value
Survey, the European Value Survey and Eurobarometer are also used to look
into some of the issues related to the perceptions among citizens on a number
of narratives. Data on perceptions of levels of benefits, for example, and how
they relate to actual benefit will also be included as far as possible. The use of
core words and how this has developed, using Google Ngrams and ProQuest
News and Newspaper, will be seen as an indicator of how these might have
influenced welfare states. Using international data and studies is an important
way to ensure a comparative approach in depicting whether narratives might
have a different influence across different types of welfare states. Dependent
on data availability, there will mainly be a focus on European welfare states
from different welfare regimes, although reference to a number of other cases,
especially the US, is also included. A comparative approach can help in trying
to understand whether there is a common trend or whether we are witnessing
differences depending on the type of welfare regime we are within.
Thereby, the book will disentangle central myths and narratives about
the welfare states, and how this can have, and might have had, an impact on
welfare states’ development, including referring back to debates on welfare
chauvinism and deservingness (Van Oorschot 2006; Greve 2019). It will
also discuss why some myths might be more persistent and why some stories
Myths, narratives and welfare states: an introduction 3
seemingly have a stronger impact than others. The cherry picking of infor-
mation among decision makers might also influence development, as well as
– possibly directly – fake news. The myths might both imply higher as well as
lower spending in welfare states as well as in the tax and duty system. This also
includes attitudes towards the welfare state and the possible changes over the
years, as these changes can be argued to be part of how myths and narratives
can have an impact on welfare states’ development. Some of the issues related
to attitudes, including how a myth is related to “suspicions about welfare abuse
and cheating” (Svallfors 2012, 6), might also include negative views on the
administration of the welfare states, but this is not central to the analysis.
One example of the policy use of myths is the phrase used for change in
several countries “there is no alternative” sometimes labelled the TINA argu-
ment (Jensen and Tyler 2015), which was used especially in the wake of the
financial crisis, but also as part of the consequences of the pressure on welfare
states due to the ageing of populations and globalization.
The impact of narratives and myths on welfare states’ development is at the
core of this book. Still, an important question is how they are able to have an
impact. This will not be the central aspect of the book; however, one condition
seems to be the availability of connectors. A good illustration of why this is
important is that in 1775 two persons tried to warn people in Boston that the
British were coming their way. They rode in different directions to warn people
and to get a militia ready to take on the British; one succeeded, whereas the
other one didn’t. The successful person was what Gladwell called a connector
(Gladwell 2006). The task was more difficult at that time as there was the need
to get in contact directly with many persons, whereas today the net can be used
in many and different ways to influence what will go viral; although, here also
some influencers work better than others. Thus, having easy access to com-
munication with others with the same opinion might also influence opinions,
and might also be the reason why discussions about different perspectives are,
perhaps, more difficult now than they used to be.
Another possible way in which myths influence is by blame-avoidance
strategies, because by blaming someone it might be possible to avoid electoral
punishment for the reduction in benefits as framing can affect attitudes towards
changes (Wenzelburger and Hörisch 2016). Thus, policy makers might use
myths as a way to get changes through and perhaps even to hide who are the
winners and losers of the changes if they have found a scapegoat. Furthermore,
policy feedback is a way in which myths have an impact, including how to find
“the causal mechanisms linking public opinion with public policy” (Béland
and Schlager 2019, 200). This is mainly done indirectly by linking knowledge
on perception and attitudes with the actual development in welfare states.
A separate problem is that with modern media, people often look at forums
where they are already in contact with someone they agree with, which then
