ABSTRACT
One of the founding fathers of modem welfare state research, Richard Titmuss (1907–1973), posed the following questions at the end of his last book: 'What effect does the system have on the social and psychological sense of community? Does it have divisive or unifying effects and in what sense and for what groups? Does it, in short, widen or diminish the concept and consciousness of "who is my neighbour'" (Titmuss 1974). The same kind of interest in a connection between the system – or call it institutions – and attitudes of the citizens – or call it actors – was the point of departure for this book. Based on the insights from comparative welfare studies, the book has tried to open the 'black box' of the formation of support for welfare policy in different welfare regimes. Most people are probably not aware that they live in a distinct welfare regime, and the majority of the many people who have answered our questionnaires would probably reject the idea that their answers are heavily influenced by this institutional arrangement. However, they may grant us that it is not easy to pinpoint the origin of one's either positive or negative feelings about the poor and unemployed. To use the words in Charles Lemert's introduction to 'the sociological life', we are dealing with 'the mysterious power of social structures', which 'appear to people in the course of daily life as through a mysterious fog' (Lemert 2002, p. 118).
