20. Welfare state experiences: what they are, and why they matter

Ben Baumberg Geiger (King's College London)

Triin Lauri (Tallinn University) 

Paulus Wagner (European University Institute) 

We know a lot about the direct and distributional impacts of providing cash and services to citizens. But we know less about how the broader experiences of receiving cash and services affect people – that is, how these interactions with the state can have important impacts beyond just the payments or services themselves. There is mounting evidence that the way that these interactions are organised influences health and wellbeing, labour market behaviour, and wider socio-political attitudes (Baekgaard et al., 2021; Lehmus-Sum 2023; Barr et al., 2016; Gubrium and Pellissery, 2016; Madsen and Mikkelsen, 2022; Tarshish and Holler, 2024; Soss 1999; Kumlin and Rothstein, 2005; Wagner 2023). At their worst these interactions may make people sick/miserable, push them away from work, and generate discontent that fuels populism. Therefore, to understand the role of welfare state experiences is crucial in aiming for inclusive societies and a key challenge for the welfare state in the 21st century.

A number of studies have looked at these issues, focusing on ‘dignity’, ‘fairness/justice’, ‘administrative literacy’, ‘administrative burden’, or ‘policy feedback’ (Gubrium et al., 2013; Walker et al., 2013; Lohss et al., 2020; Döring, 2021; Baekgaard and Tankink, 2022; Soss and Schram, 2007; Mettler, 2002; Kumlin and Stadelmann-Steffen, 2014; Busemeyer, 2019; Dupuy et al. 2022; Bolton et al., 2022; Gjersøe et al. 2024; Lavee 2024; Bürgisser et al., forthcoming). These studies have produced valuable knowledge, and we need to bring researchers within these fields together to more fully understand people’s experiences as a whole. We also need to consider these in a comparative perspective – experiences are mostly absent from comparative welfare state research – and to build these into the heart of our theories of welfare states.  

In this stream, we want to bring researchers together to tackle these issues together, and in particular welcome qualitative, quantitative and theoretical papers that:

- Look at welfare state experiences relating to any aspect of social policy, such as on the one hand to services and ‘social investment’ policies, where the experiential aspect is particularly evident, and on the other hand focusing on cash transfers, where experiences have been particularly neglected.

- Theorise how we can understand and measure welfare state experiences, and/or propose an agenda for future research.

- Look at the causes of good/bad welfare state experiences, whether at the micro-level (e.g. characteristics of particular interactions/spaces) or the macro-level (e.g. how experiences relate to welfare regimes). 

- Look at the impacts of welfare state experiences, whether on political attitudes (social trust, welfare chauvinism, populism), mental health/wellbeing, physical health, labour market behaviour, fairness perceptions or other domains.