This article analyses comparative data for the last half of the 1990s to investigate the determinants of individual and cross-national variation in public support for cuts in unemployment benefits spending. The authors consider public opinion on unemployment benefits retrenchment as a product not only of individual-level characteristics but also of national-level features. With few exceptions, the latter features have been limited by previous studies to the institutional characteristics of welfare policies across countries operationalized in a superficial way: i.e. the type of welfare regime. This article proposes a more detailed operationalization of the institutional characteristics of welfare policies by considering cross-country variations in the generosity of unemployment protection. The authors also take into account a structural characteristic of the polities considered here: i.e. the seriousness of the unemployment problem. Even if the results are tentative, the authors believe they open the ‘black box of welfare types’ that until very recently has been the predominant explanation when accounting for aggregated variation in public opinion on welfare states.
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