AMERICAN BEHAVIORAL SCIENTISTRothstein / COOPERATION FOR SOCIAL PROTECTION Cooperation for Social Protection Explaining Variation in Welfare Programs

The welfare state can be seen as a measure of the social protection. A major finding within the comparative welfare state research is the differences in scope, institutionalization, and effectiveness against poverty between the institutionalized forms of social protection among the industrialized Western democracies. The major question in this article is, How can we understand and explain the causal mechanism between such institutions, social norms, and human behavior? A model is presented to show that if voters/taxpayers act out of self-inter-est, both a selective/minimal and an encompassing/universal welfare state are likely out-comes. The different outcomes cannot be explained by the importance of the ideology of rul-ing political parties or that citizens in these different countries have different basic values about social justice. Instead, the argument is that the puzzle why structurally similar coun-tries vary so much in their systems of social protection can be solved by institutional theory. A just system must generate its own support. This means that it must be arranged so as to bring about in its members the corresponding sense of justice, an effective desire to act in accordance with its rules for reasons of justice. Thus, the require-ment of stability and the criterion of discouraging desires that conflict with th