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: The importance of institutional trust for structuring welfare state support (WSS) has been advanced by several scholars. Yet, the thesis has not received convincing empirical support. We argue that the weak evidence observed by previous research is caused by the failure of not extending the analytical framework beyond the study of public institutions. Using Sweden as a test case, our analytical framework covers trust in public institutions (TPI) and market institutions (TMI). The main findings are: (1) TMI has a robust negative effect on WSS; (2) the expected relationship between TPI and WSS is strengthened controlling for TMI; (3) TMI mediates the relationships between socio-economic variables and WSS. These findings underline the importance of bringing in other institutional configurations that are seen as conceivable alternatives to the state for administrating social welfare, not the least in studies primarily interested in the link between TPI and support for state-organised welfare.

This paper attempts to resolve scholarly disagreements concerning how class conflicts are manifested in contemporary welfare states. An analytical distinction is made between social (tensions/antagonism between classes) and political (class-based differences in political preferences) manifestations of class conflict. Using International Social Survey Program data (1999/2009) from 20 countries, the results indicate that social conflict is more common in meager welfare states where material inequality is relatively high compared to encompassing highly redistributive welfare states where levels of material inequality are relatively low. When it comes to distributive struggles in the political sphere – political conflict – the pattern is reversed. The results do not support arguments emphasizing that class as an analytical concept is irrelevant for understanding socio-political phenomena in modern industrial democracies. Instead, the results suggest that the character of class conflict varies across national socio-economic contexts in tandem with between-country variation in the institutional setup of the welfare state. The results support Walter Korpi’s theory outlined in The Democratic Class Struggle, which suggests that in modern welfare states, institutionalized political conflict tends to replace less institutionalized and unorganized social conflict. This is more the case in encompassing welfare states than in residual welfare states.

The Role of Government (ROG) module of the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) is a unique high-quality data source for comparative research on political attitudes and orientations. This article describes the content, coverage, and history of the ISSP 2016 ROG module, which was fielded in 35 countries. The module has been fielded five times since its inception in 1985, and a majority of the items in the 2016 module are replicated from previous waves to facilitate comparisons over time. In addition, a substantial number of new items are included to cover pertinent issues not previously addressed by the ISSP. Topics include (but are not restricted to) civil liberties; national security and challenges; state intervention in the economy; government taxation, spending, redistribution, and responsibilities; political trust and efficacy; corruption and institutional trust; and government responsiveness. This new wave of the module gauges political opinion at a moment in history characterized by substantial political turmoil and change in many countries. At the same time, this fifth wave strengthens the analytical capacity of the module for charting longitudinal developments both within and across countries. Overall, this makes the ISSP ROG module an attractive platform for asking new questions that can further the mutual development of theory and empirical analysis in comparative research.