Garnering Public Support for Minority Welfare needs

February 9, 2023 American Political Science Review, Journals, Public Scholarship Program Comments Off on Garnering Public Support for Minority Welfare needs

In the APSA Public Scholarship Program, graduate students in political science produce summaries of new research in the American Political Science Review. This piece, written by Anntiana Maral Sabeti, covers the new article by Andrej Findor, Comenius University, Matej Hruška, Comenius University, Roman Hlatky, University of North Texas, Tomáš Hrustič, Slovak Academy of Sciences, and Zuzana Bošelová, Milan Šimečka Foundation, “Equality, Reciprocity, or Need? Bolstering Welfare Policy Support for Marginalized Groups with Distributive Fairness.” 

While securing funding seems like the biggest hurdle for social welfare spending, often convincing the public that money should be spent on marginalized groups can prove just as complicated. This is the policy predicament Andrej Findor, Matej Hruška, Roman Hlatky, Tomáš Hrustič, and Zuzana Bošelová evaluate in their recent APSR article. Their research considers the factors that can help increase popular support for spending on minority welfare programs and how to design these programs in a way that draws public support rather than public disdain.

The authors argue that people make decisions about social policies based on a variety of factors like ideology, ethnocentrism, and self-interest. Most often these factors are not independent and interact with each other. These interactions mean that an initial position can be being amplified, abated, or reversed when mixed with another factor. For example, existing work shows racially driven opposition to a social policy can be reversed if the policy is clearly in someone’s self-interest. These internal deliberations are then shaped by external factors, including how a policy is designed or framed when presented to the public. So, in the end, internal calculations pass through external framing, and this is how individuals decide if, who and how much to support when it comes to social welfare spending. The authors believe that policy design and frames are key because these two elements can be shaped to help increase public support for social welfare spending programs that aim to help minorities. Specifically, they suggest that incorporating any of the three principles of distributive fairness – equality, need, and reciprocity – into the design of a policy, and conveying these principles to audiences, can bolster policy support.

To test the implications of their theory, the authors conduct three survey experiments in Slovakia and select the Roma as the minority group to receive spending. This selection is noteworthy as Roma have long been the most marginalized, stigmatized, and excluded ethnic group across Europe and are subject to the most negative stereotypes. Given the breadth and pervasiveness of anti-Roma sentiment, the authors consider their findings to be a “floor,” meaning they believe animosity towards Roma is so high that their findings would be stronger with a less discriminated group.

The first experiment tests the extent to which Slovaks oppose two different policies that benefit the Roma. Respondents were divided into four groups. Two groups were asked how much public spending they would allot to either improve water accessibility for a lesser-developed municipality or increase funding for rural regions in Slovakia. The same question was posed to the other two groups but adding additional detail that most beneficiaries would be Roma. The authors find that specifying that Roma make up most or even part of those that would receive funding reduced the amount respondents were willing to allocate by 25%, indicating notable racial bias.

In the second experiment, the authors surveyed the attitudes of majority Slovak and minority Roma members of a municipality to gauge which distributive fairness concept best establishes that a minority group is deserving of help. 113 respondents were interviewed and presented with a control scenario followed by three vignettes in random order which represent the three different distributive principles: equality, reciprocity, and need. The control scenario states the government is considering building housing for Roma that would be 95% funded by the European Union. The “equality” vignette mentions that equitable amount housing would be also built for non-Roma, the “need” vignette clarifies that only Roma in greatest need would receive housing, and the “reciprocity” vignette stipulates that only Roma who worked on construction of the buildings would be eligible to live in the new housing units.  Unsurprisingly, the authors find that Slovaks supported this social welfare spending less than Roma respondents.  The Slovak majority also approved spending if it was framed in terms of equality and reciprocity, with reciprocity receiving stronger support. Roma respondents, who represent the targeted minority, also supported spending when it was framed in terms of equality and reciprocity; however, the relationship inverted as equality was more popular than reciprocity with the Roma.

“So, while reciprocity might be the most compelling way to convince the public that minority groups deserve socio-economic support, is it still a worthy avenue if it does little to resolve the macro-economic structural issues leading to inequality and even serves to reinforce them?” In the final experiment, the authors extended the second study to a national scale. They recruited 1009 individuals for an online survey and presented them with the control scenario and one of the three vignettes. They find that including “reciprocity” in policy evoked the strongest support for funding and “need” earned the least.

Justifying who should benefit from social welfare spending, especially when it crosses identity lines, is tricky but it can be done with certain policy design decisions. In the article, reciprocity is identified as the most useful policy provision to garner majority support for minority spending. Yet, the authors note that reciprocity is also one of the least effective methods for combating income inequality. It was also unpopular with the Roma themselves whose aversion is likely due to prior experience of such programs backfiring. So, while reciprocity might be the most compelling way to convince the public that minority groups deserve socio-economic support, is it still a worthy avenue if it does little to resolve the macro-economic structural issues leading to inequality and even serves to reinforce them? If policy design and frames are powerful tools for capturing public approval, future work could consider how to frame policies that are most effective at combating income inequality – but generally unpopular- such as those based on need, to make them more appealing to the public.