It is commonly argued that public support for the welfare state is in long-term decline in the UK. Evidence from the British Social Attitudes Survey (BSA) is typically cited to support this claim, but it only stretches back to 1983. Few would disagree that the Thatcher years offered an unusual socio-political-economic context, which raises a question over whether the BSA's early 1980s baseline provides a misleading view on support for the welfare state over the longue durée. In this article, we explore this issue, piecing together data from the Beveridge era through to the present day, drawing on data from contemporary studies and surveys; opinion polls; and historical government surveys and reports. Our method is undoubtedly a 'second best approach', making use of often limited historical data, which means we remain cautious in offering bold findings. However, we argue there is some evidence to suggest the 1980s were an unusual moment, suggesting the decline in support for welfare is less dramatic than analysis of the BSA might make it seem, but also that support for the welfare state during the postwar consensus years was likely more equivocal than we often believe it to be from today's perspective, perhaps reflecting a tendency to reify this period as a 'golden age' of welfare and so underplaying the complexity of the politics of social policy in the pre-BSA period.

This chapter discusses the study findings in light of relevant theory on policy transfer and multi-level governance. Three theoretical conclusions are made: (1) public health policies today are often subject to a policy transfer 'web', in which networks of actors involving both policymakers and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are required to navigate various different jurisdictions and levels of governance in order to ensure that a policy is successfully adopted; (2) transnational corporations have analytically-significant consequences for policy transfer processes and may act intentionally to disrupt such processes; and (3) the activities of transnational corporate actors can shape subsequent transfer processes, as policy-makers and NGOs build relationships and coalitions in an effort to adapt to, and counteract, global corporate political strategies. Keywords Policy transferThis volume has sought to examine the development of standardised packaging (SP) policy in Europe at both the European Union (EU) and member-state levels, placing developments in Europe within the global context of tobacco-control debates and processes. As the analysis above

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Ideas and institutions are frequently used as explanatory concepts regarding policy development and change. There is an on‐going debate as to the explanatory weight that each should be afforded; Weiss and Carayannis (2001) identify a spectrum of opinions, with ‘institutionalist' approaches that embed ideas within institutionalist frameworks at one end, and ‘constructivist' approaches which argue that ideational concepts should be dis‐embedded from institutional considerations at the other. Drawing on 43 interviews with senior World Bank staff and a documentary analysis, this paper traces two policy agendas – social protection and fragile states – to identify the institutional and ideational features of the World Bank that a developmental agenda must navigate to achieve prominence in the Bank's work. It finds that the success of a policy agenda is determined by whether the ideas fit with a macro‐ideational dominant paradigm, and identifies several institutional features such as the incentive structure and lending mechanisms that influence an agenda's success.