Is Social Policy Retrenchment Unpopular? How Welfare Reforms Affect Government Popularity

This article investigates an established proposition in the welfare literature, namely whether retrenchment is indeed unpopular among the citizenry. Additional to the hypothesis that retrenchment has a negative impact on general government popularity, this article presents a more refined hypothesis: retrenchment is influential only for those citizens highly interested in social policy. This study analyses government performance data derived from election studies (CSES data) in a multilevel design and tests the influence of actual retrenchment initiatives. The findings indicate that retrenchment is not generally unpopular; however, it has a negative impact on the opinions of those interested in the topic.