ABSTRACT
This chapter purposes an imaginary open-air assembly was created from the cross-national data set of the 'International Social Survey Programme' 1990 by 'pooling' six national samples into one single, weighted, sample of respondents and by subsequently sticking a label indicating his/her nationalities to each individual's back. Rather than leading to a convergence, the divergent trend of public perceptions of the responsibility of the government kept steady at cross-national levels of aggregate perceptions. Further, multivariate analyses showed public perceptions about the proper role of the state to be more deeply entrenched in crossnational differences of political cultures than in national partisan cleavages and specific national socialstructural differences. On the other hand the public reacts anti-cyclically in terms of reaction to government plans to increase private participation in health care provision. As for Germany as good as no, and at best only a minimal socio-structural and party political disagreement amongst the population in relation to the interventionist state was to be found.
