I use qualitative interview data to show that negative experiences citizens make with labor market and pension policies can lead them to form more „exclusivist“ welfare attitudes (deservingness attitudes and welfare chauvinism). Negative welfare experiences typically come down to feelings of injustice and misrecognition triggered by welfare conditionalities (obligations a recipient has to fulfill) that do not take into account a specific recipient group’s capacity to fulfill these requirements, or their specific situation of need. On the contrary, I show that certain social investment policies can trigger very positive welfare experiences precisely by recognizing specific situations of need and by providing resources that enable recipients to make an effective change. In return, many of them argue that others should be given the same opportunity, showcasing the formation of “inclusivist” welfare attitudes.This early-stage paper draft has been presented at the CEE-Sciences Po Workshop on Policy Feedback on 17-June-2022.

This articles makes a contribution to the seeming economic puzzle around workers‘ far-right vote. Drawing on 75 qualitative interviews with Austrian and German blue-collar workers, it highlights that the core question moving workers‘ socio-economic policy preferences is about the value of work. There are, however, multiple ideological ways of addressing this question. One of these is „exclusivist“ and typical for the far-right: it goes with a narrow materialistic framing of the value of work and a demand of sanctions for those who do not work. The article equally highlights a „moderate“ and an „inclusivist“ way of addressing the value-of-work question, both of which find resonance among workers. It proposes that addressing this core question from diverse ideological perspectives within democracy may help to reconnect a seemingly „left behind“ working-class to democratic politics.

In this article, I use cross-national survey data (ISSP) to show that the social relations at the workplace, measured as the quality of relations between an organizations management and its employees, have an important effect on employees’ political attitudes. Dependently employed citizens, who have a negative experience of workplace relations, are significantly more likely to support populist right-wing parties. I then use qualitative interviews with Austrian and German employees, managers, and company owners to build a typology of workplace relations in small and large organizations that systematically affects political attitude formation, theorizing several channels of politicization of workplace worries. [This article draft was presented at EGN Conference 2022 at EUI, Florence.]