ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the bases of differential support for the welfare state in public opinion among five advanced capitalist countries: Great Britain, West Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, and the United States. Support for government intervention to reduce inequalities may be shaped by both normative and existential justice beliefs. Welfare state policies importantly shape the stratification orders that prevail in advanced capitalist societies. Effects of subjective status may reflect the influence of a number of specific objective status characteristics that are not reflected in gross measures such as occupation category, education, and income. Regressions for Government Minimums run in the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) data confirm the findings from the International Social Justice Project (ISJP) analyses. The "positive" effects of muted self-interest calculations in the Netherlands, however, are offset to a significant degree by the presence in the Netherlands of "negative" effects of justice beliefs of the same size as in Great Britain.
