ABSTRACT
The problem of legitimacy is a question of how people react to the experience of redistribution: do they accept social policies and play along with them or do they oppose these policies and try to beat the system? Popular acceptance of the welfare state depends on loyalty in opinions as well as behaviour. From public opinion research we now have enough information to draw a fairly reliable, albeit rough, picture of public opinion on social policy in Western industrial nations. Social policies are different in each country and so is public opinion, but there are remarkable similarities between the welfare state nations in the structure of social policy opinion. A trend of falling support for the welfare state in popular opinion can be observed in the material that is investigated; a weak trend, it is true, but the direction of change is unquestionable.
