Public response to welfare policy retrenchment: The importance of trust in implementing agencies. The case of early retirement in Sweden 1999–2010

There is a long‐standing argument that citizensapos; trust in the state needs to be recurrently reproduced for policies to endure and that this also includes trust in its separate policy agencies. Such trust is likely to be more important for costlier policies, as, for example, social insurance sche...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Social policy & administration 2020-01, Vol.54 (1), p.102-118
Main Authors: Stensöta, Helena Olofsdotter, Bendz, Anna
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
attitudes
Development Studies
Early retirement
Feedback
Left wing politics
policy feedback
Political Science
preferences
Public Administration
retrenchment
social insurance
Social Issues
Social response
Social security
Social Work
state
Statsvetenskap
Sweden
Trust
welfare generosity
Welfare policy
Welfare reform
Welfare state
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Summary:There is a long‐standing argument that citizensapos; trust in the state needs to be recurrently reproduced for policies to endure and that this also includes trust in its separate policy agencies. Such trust is likely to be more important for costlier policies, as, for example, social insurance schemes. The article explores whether short‐term changes in welfare programme generosity affect peopleapos;s trust in the agency implementing the programme. Using the example of early retirement in the encompassing welfare state of Sweden, we study a decade of significant reform (1999–2010), during which the inflow to early retirement diminished greatly, as did citizensapos; trust in the implementing Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA). We conclude that citizensapos; trust is higher when implementation is more generous. Indeed, a third of the drop in citizensapos; trust in the SSIA over the period can be explained by declining levels of generosity in early retirement, with people politically to the left responding with lower trust. Theoretically, we suggest, first, that trust in implementing institutions can function as feedback to policy and, second, that there is a basic relationship between more generous policy outcome and higher trust in encompassing welfare states such as Sweden.
ISSN:0144-5596
1467-9515
DOI:10.1111/spol.12525