Conferences

In this paper, data from the EVS, the ESS, Eurostat, ICTWSS and UNCTAD, are combined to examine, through multi-level modeling, the cross-national and over-time variation in attitudes towards values underpinning the European Social Model (ESM).

While not a unitary concept, the ESM can be indirectly defined through its core characteristics: welfare provisions, non-discrimination in workplace, social and economic rights, and social partners’ participation in economic governance. So far, the related research has been geared towards examining these formal institutions of social models in EU member states. This study extends this perspective and provides insight into how much public support the model receives, by focusing on EU public opinion attitudes towards values underpinning the ESM: sharing risks and opportunities, social solidarity and cohesion, protection through active social intervention, consultation in industry and social and economic citizenship rights (as defined by Giddens 2007). First, individual attitudes from the period 1990- 2006 are aggregated to the national level to investigate trends over time and cross-national variation. Second, national level indicators are used to examine national social models with reference to the core institutional characteristics of ESM. Next, the study establishes the degree of commonness (convergence, clustering or hybridization) between national publics’ attitudes towards ESM values, as well as the degree of commonness between formal institutions of national social models. Finally, the paper examines the patterns of relations between attitudes and formal institutional setting at the national level, as well as the level of economic and political integration into the EU. While the general discussion covers old and new member states, particular attention is paid to the 2004 entrants.