Welfare state targeted dissatisfaction and political ... · influence political outcomes (Brady...

Welfare State Targeted Dissatisfaction and Political Action

Maria Pettersson

Department of Political Science

Göteborg University

[email protected]

Draft prepared for the XIV NOPSA conference, Reykjavik, Iceland, August 11-13 2005

Comments are more than welcome, but please do not cite – work in progress!

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Welfare State Targeted Dissatisfaction and Political Action

Examples of citizens protesting against welfare retrenchments can be found all over Sweden

today.1,2 Angry parents and pupils demonstrate against cutbacks in public schools in

Stockholm and Göteborg. In Lidköping, 10 000 demonstrated and 40 000 citizens signed

petitions against the closing-down of the emergency room. 2 500 signed petitions against the

retrenchment in local care provision in Sveg. In Göteborg, the closing-down of five local

health care centres caused massive protests including demonstrations, petition signing and a

sit-in of one of the five health care centres. These examples are pointing to the fact that

citizens dissatisfied with welfare state services, usually locally produced public service, take

political actions to channel this grievance.3

Even though we can observe this behaviour, we know surprisingly little about the

presumed relationship between welfare state targeted dissatisfaction and political action.

The aim with this paper is investigate under what conditions welfare state targeted

dissatisfaction is related to welfare state targeted political action. To be more precise, three

questions shall be investigated more closely. First, is there at all a relationship between

public service dissatisfaction and political action? Second, is public service dissatisfaction

more related to certain modes of political action than others? Third, can we identify any

differences in this relationship due to the institutional design of different welfare state

institutions?4

It is important out of many reasons to investigate under what conditions citizens channel

their welfare state dissatisfaction into political action. Governmental decision-making

structures have been moved downwards, to the local level, and upwards, to the EU-level.

Goal-orientated governance has replaced centralisation and detailed governance (Pierre &

Rothstein 2003). Together, these changes has altered the conditions for citizens’ political

participation (Norris 2002; Verba, Schlozman & Brady 1995). Instead of trying to influence

the input-side of politics thorough political parties, citizens’ are today influencing the

output-side of politics through other forms of political action (Goul Andersen & Hoff 2001;

Togeby et al. 2003). Thus, contemporary politics is to a higher degree focused on political

output and hence, evaluations of politics become more important for citizens’ political

preferences and actions. As a consequence, it has become harder to influence policy through

1 This paper is written within the research program The Political Sociology of the Welfare State: Institutions, Social Cleavages and Orientations, financed by the Swedish Council for Working Life and Social Research and The Bank of Sweden Tercentennary Foundation. 2 Parts of this paper are based on Pettersson, Maria (2005) “Rör inte vår välfärd!” in Sören Holmberg & Lennart Weibull Lyckan kommer, lyckan går, SOM-rapport nr 35, Göteborgs universitet, SOM-institutet and Pettersson, Maria (forthcoming) “The Relationship Between Public Service Dissatisfaction and Political Action – Does Institutional Design Matter?” in Stefan Svallfors (ed) The Political Sociology of the Welfare State: Institutions, Social Cleavages and Orientations. 3 Reports of the various welfare protests mentioned can be found in Dagens Nyheter 1999-05-26:C02; 2000-04-04:C04, GT/Expressen 2004-04-06:10; Göteborgs-Posten 2004-02-01:10; 2003-12-21:12; 2005-05-20:8, Västnytt 2003-05-20 and Östersunds-Posten 2004-10-15:8. 4 In this paper, welfare state dissatisfaction and public service dissatisfaction will be used synonymous.

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the channels of representative democracy and the importance of other forms of political

action, such as contacting and petition signing, have grown (Petersson et al. 1998; Norris

2002).

Together, these developments make it crucial to investigate the relationship between

public service dissatisfaction and political action and especially if and how this relationship

differ between institutional arrangements. The five public service areas that will be analysed

in this paper are public school, local health care, hospital care, elder care and public

transportation. These institutions are selected to represent different kinds of institutions, i.e.

to provide variation in institutional design.

The definition of political action we will use focuses on actions taken by citizens to

influence political outcomes (Brady 1999), thereby excluding actions intended to influence

the selection of politicians, which among others, Verba with friends uses (see Verba,

Schlozman & Brady 1995: 38).

Theoretically, this paper rests upon three corner stones: research on evaluations of

government output and political behaviour, research on political participation and finally a

relatively new research that combines institutional theory and opinion studies to explicit

connect the impact of institutions on citizens’ preferences and behaviours. The central

concept that will be used comparing institutions is institutionalised citizen empowerment

and will be introduced and discussed after the next section, which deals with previous

research on dissatisfaction and political action. After the theoretical parts, a section on data

and measures follows before the actual empirical analysis. The empirical analysis consists of

two sections; one section on the relationship between public service dissatisfaction and

political action and one section on dissatisfaction, modes of action and institutional design.

The paper ends with a discussion about the welfare state as an opportunity structure of

political action and to what extent we can identify different patterns in this relationship, both

regarding different forms of action and differences in institutional design.

Dissatisfaction and Political Action

It is a well known fact that citizens’ evaluations of government output matters for their

political opinions. Studies of economic voting, focusing on citizens’ evaluations of the

economy in general as well of the personal economy and their impact on voting, have been

conducted for some decades now (two well-known studies are Kinder & Kiewiet 1981;

Lewis-Beck 1988). Also, several studies have investigated the relationship between economic

evaluations and political trust or confidence in political institutions (Listhaug 1995;

Holmberg 1999; McAllister 1999; Huseby 2000). A general finding is that negative

evaluations of government economic performance have negative effect on citizens’ political

trust.

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During the late 1990s, scholars started to expand the number of policy areas taken into

account and the effects of other areas of government output on voting and political support

were investigated. An important conclusion from these studies is that not only the economy

matters for individuals’ political preferences, but also evaluations of areas such as public

service. Negative evaluations of social policy output makes people develop feelings of

political distrust and also less inclined to support the governing party (Huseby 2000; Kumlin

2004). The politics of the welfare state is indeed something that cannot be neglected when

trying to understand citizens’ political preferences, and this argument is, as will be shown

below, equally valid when talking about how and when citizens take political actions.

However, it is old news that there is a connection of some kind between policy

evaluations and political participation. Although the order of causality can be heavily

criticised, many studies have taken on a similar perspective as the one used in this chapter,

i.e. that policy dissatisfaction spurs political action (Farah, Barnes & Heunks 1979; Lyons &

Lowery 1989; Petersson et al. 1998; Goul Andersen & Hoff 2001; Dalton 2002). Starting with

the Political Action study, Farah, Barnes & Heunks (1979) found supporting evidence of

policy dissatisfaction having strong positive effect on protest participation5, but limited effect

on traditional or conventional6 political participation. Strong effect means that the

relationship between dissatisfaction and protest potential were found in all the five countries

analysed, i.e. The Netherlands, Great Britain, United State, Germany and Austria while a

positive relationship between dissatisfaction and conventional participation were found in

The Netherlands and United State only (Farah, Barnes & Heunks 1979). Comparing United

States, Great Britain, Germany and France, using the World Value Study, Russel Dalton

(2002) found that citizens dissatisfied with government performance, measured as

satisfaction with the way democracy works, were only slightly more inclined to protest than

satisfied citizens. Interestingly, political dissatisfaction proved to have greater effect on

protest participation compared to conventional participation in all four countries (Dalton

2002).

Moving to a more local context, Lyons & Lowery (1989) study of two American

municipalities also found some support for the hypothesis that dissatisfaction with local

public service, measured as a combination of retrospective and present evaluations, had 5 The authors’ measure of policy dissatisfaction consisted of an index taking account both of government performance and perceived importance (salience) of ten policy areas. The policy areas are education, medical care, housing, pollution, crime control, job security, old age, wealth equality, sex equality and minorities’ equality. The authors also use an index of protest and conventional participation. The protest potential index includes actions as petitions, demonstrations, boycotts, occupations, rent strikes, blockades and unofficial strikes. Conventional participation consists of reading about politics in newspapers, discussing politics with friends, work on community problems, contacting politicians or public officials, convincing friends to vote as one self, participation in election campaign and attend political meeting. 6 In the 1960s and 1970s, the words conventional/traditional and unconventional/untraditional were often used to denote the difference between participation such as voting and party membership on the one hand, and forms of protest participation on the other hand. Today, it feels quite old fashioned to label political actions such as demonstrating, signing petitions and so on as unconventional, since many of these actions are much more common than being a party member.

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positive effect on local political action such as contacting officials, signing petitions and

attending meetings (Lyons & Lowery 1989).

The relationship between dissatisfaction and political participation has also been

investigated in the Swedish Citizen Studies (Petersson, Westholm & Blomberg 1989;

Petersson et al. 1998). The aim was to investigate attempts made by citizens to influence their

everyday situation and several citizen roles were included: housing, as a patient or next of

kin, as a parent of small children, as a parent of school children, as a student, as employed

and finally as unemployed. According to the authors, being able to exert influence is a way

for the citizen to exercise power, to become empowered. However, if a citizen dissatisfied

with service provision does not take any action to exert influence, the citizen feels powerless.

Although this study measures dissatisfaction with “circumstances in your child’s school” or

“circumstances in the care of you/your next of kin”, and thereby emphasises personal

experiences and not policy in general, important lessons can be learned. First of all, not all

citizens take action as a consequence of dissatisfaction. Parents of small children and school

children are more inclined to take action in order to bring about improvements than patients

and unemployed. Regarding patients and unemployed, the authors find patterns of

powerlessness, i.e. that perceived dissatisfaction with one’s situation in these two citizen

roles is turned into inaction and not attempts to improve circumstances (Petersson et al. 1998,

chapter 2).

The Swedish Citizen study has also been compared with the Norwegian and Danish

counterparts in the book Democracy and citizenship in Scandinavia by Jørgen Goul

Andersen and Jens Hoff. This study not only compares, but also extends the analysis

regarding user participation by taking the institutional design into account. Thus, this study

can be seen as an attempt to bridge traditional mass opinion studies with an institutional

perspective, something this chapter will develop even further. Goul Andersen & Hoff

characterises different public service institutions according to their degree of voice

opportunities. Comparable data between the three Scandinavian countries exits regarding

health care, school and child care. All these three institutions are labelled as high voice

opportunities and fairly good exit opportunities. The two institutions labelled as bad exit

opportunities are only present in the Danish data case (employment office and tax

authorities). Dissatisfaction with health care, child care and schools does affect political

action, but the authors also find that satisfied citizens try to influence. One interpretation of

the effects of institutional design is that formal mechanisms of user influence should lead to a

stronger relationship between dissatisfaction and attempts to influence. In general, Denmark

takes a leading position regarding institutionalised voice-mechanisms in all three public

service areas, Sweden is second and Norway last. Goul Andersen & Hoff also finds empirical

evidence supporting this, i.e. Danish parents try to a higher extent than Swedish and

Norwegian parents to influence (Goul Andersen & Hoff 2001).

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In sum, previous research establishes that there is indeed a relationship between welfare

state related output evaluations and citizens’ political participation. This research also helps

to point out important predictors of political participation and to differentiate between

different modes of participation. But the question whether public service dissatisfaction is

more related to certain modes of political action than others and under what institutional

circumstances this relationship appears has not been taken into consideration to the same

extent.

Institutionalised citizen empowerment

The main theoretical and analytical tool that shall be used in this chapter is what we refer to

as institutionalised citizen empowerment (Hoff 1993; Schneider & Ingram 1997; Soss 1999;

Goul Andersen, Torpe & Andersen 2000; Kumlin & Rothstein 2004). The principal argument

presented here is that different institutional arrangements have different effects on the

relationship between public service dissatisfaction and political action. The citizen can

become more or less empowered when encountering a welfare state institution and this

affects the relationship between dissatisfaction and political action. In other words, “People

can come away from encounters with government feeling informed and empowered or

helpless, ignorant and impotent.” (Schneider & Ingram 1997: 79).

We should understand institutionalised citizen empowerment as a power balance

between the individual and the welfare state institutions. The higher degree of influence a

citizen has, the higher degree of empowerment. Conversely, lower degree of influence,

indicating that the institution has great deal of control over the individual, equals lower

degree of empowerment (Hoff 1993: 78f; Kumlin 2004: 55ff).

Even though several social scientists acknowledges the importance of taking

empowerment into consideration when thinking about how institutions affect individuals

political behaviour, the empirical analyses are still quite few (but see Hoff 1993; Soss 1999;

2002; Campbell 2003; Kumlin 2004). The need for this kind of empirical work has been

articulated, since we lack knowledge about the institutional mechanisms (Mettler & Soss

2004).

Previous research that have tried to pin down the norms or mechanisms of welfare state

institutions, and also tested them empirically, has mostly relied upon the distinction between

universal and means-tested institutional arrangements (Soss 1999; Mettler 2002; Campbell

2003). When comparing two means-tested American welfare programs, Soss (1999; 2002)

argues and finds that how different welfare programs are designed affect how the people

receiving welfare think and act not only within the program, but also in politics in general.

Degree of universality, control and discretionary power all influences the individual’s

perceptions and low levels of empowerment affects recipients beliefs on effectiveness of

participation and their views on government in a negative way. Conversely, high degree of

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empowerment has positive effects on political action, trust and sense of political efficacy.

Campbell’s’ comparison of Social Security, the most universal American welfare program,

and other American welfare programs, both non-means-tested and means-tested confirms

this. Interestingly, she also finds that controlling for age, income and other resources,

recipients of non-means-tested programs have higher participation levels than recipients of

means-tested programs, something she believes is due to the institutional design of the

welfare programs (Campbell 2003). Campbell’s conclusion indicates that not only individual

background features are of importance for political action, but also that the design of welfare

state institutions matter. To compare, Verba, Schlozman and Brady (1995) also investigated

the participation level among recipients of non-means-tested welfare programs (Social

security, veteran’s benefits, Medicare and student loans), who participated to the same extent

as other American citizens, and recipients of means-tested welfare programs (AFDC,

Medicaid, Food Stamps) who had considerably lower levels of political participation. The

explanation of this pattern given by the authors does not include welfare program design, or

program participation as Soss (2002: 161) labels it. Instead, this pattern is believed to be

found due to who consists the recipients – a conclusion Campbell (2003) shows to be wrong.

Another common dimension that appears in previous research is the degree of

discretionary powers of case workers, i.e. to what extent they are able to interpret the loosely

formulated laws regulating that particular public service area (Soss 1999; Kumlin 2004). A

third dimension previously used is presence or degree of exit-options (Kumlin 2004). By

combining degree of discretionary power and degree of exit-options, Kumlin classifies

Swedish public service institutions into three categories: customer institutions (high degree

of empowerment), user institutions (medium degree of empowerment) and client

institutions (low degree of empowerment. Worth mentioning is that both public schools,

local health care and hospital care in Sweden are classified as user institutions, i.e. medium

degree of empowerment. The main finding is that that experiences with customer

institutions have positive effects on political trust, while experiences with client institutions

have exactly the opposite effect (Kumlin 2004).

Formal mechanisms of user influence, i.e. voice opportunities, is a also a dimension that

can be added (Goul Andersen & Hoff 2001). The idea behind user-influence follows the

tradition of participatory democracy, i.e. experiences of participation in matters close to the

citizen, e.g. user-influence, will fuel participation in politics in general (Pateman 1970; Goul

Andersen & Hoff 2001; Jarl 2004). Public school is the public service institution where user-

influence is most developed in Sweden, followed by elder care. The experiences with user

influence is very limited or non existent in local health care, hospital care and public

transportation (Jarl 2001).

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In sum then, the broad implications of the research referred to here are the same, i.e.

institutions that are more empowering have positive effects on citizens’ participation and

political trust.

In this paper, Kumlin’s distinction between user, client and customer institutions will be

used. According to his definition, elder care is a client institution, characterised by high

degree of discretionary power and few real exit options. Public transportation is a customer

institution, with low degree of discretionary power and real exit-options. Public schools,

local health care and hospital care can be regarded as user institutions, indicating a mid-

range position both on discretionary power and exit-options compared to client and

customer institutions. In terms of empowerment, this means that public transportation is to

be considered as the most empowering institution and elder care as the least empowering

institution. There are of course other dimensions of importance. One is the fundamental

difference between universal and means-tested services. Of the institutions included here, all

except elder care are universal institutions, i.e. open for everyone without any forms of

means-testing. Although it is clear that the concept of empowerment can contain more

dimensions than bureaucratic discretion and exit options, we will stick with Kumlin’s

distinction at this point. However, due to the explorative nature of this paper, no formal

hypotheses will be posed. Rather, we will settle with the question introduced earlier: does

institutional design help us to understand the relationship between dissatisfaction and

political action?

Data and variables

To answer the questions if there a relationship between dissatisfaction and political action, if

public service dissatisfaction is more related to certain forms of action than others and if the

effect of dissatisfaction varies due to the degree of institutionalised citizen empowerment,

data from the 2004 Swedish National SOM (Society Opinion Mass media) survey shall be

used. Two parallel questionnaires with both different and overlapping questions were used

and each was sent to 3000 respondents between 15 and 85 years of age. 65 per cent answered

the survey (Nilsson 2005). The questions used in this paper were included in the politics and

society questionnaire (the other questionnaire contains more questions on media use) and

the maximum number of respondents that can be included in the analyses are 1774.

The dependent variable used in this paper has been designed by the authors and

measures welfare state targeted political action. The question reads as follows: “Have You,

during the last 12 months, expressed Your point of view to any of the following public

institutions? For every public service institution, mark with a cross in what ways You have

expressed your viewpoints.” For every public service institution, the action alternatives are

No viewpoints expressed, Contacted civil servant, Contacted politician, Contacted mass

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media, Work in action group/organisation, Signed petition, Demonstrating, Work in

political party.

In previous research, four dimensions of participation are usually singled out when

discussing forms of political participation: voting, contacting, manifest and

party/organisation work (see for example Verba & Nie 1972; Petersson et al. 1998; Teorell,

Torcal & Montero 2004). Since voting is not of interest here, three dimensions are left and we

can nicely fit our measures into these dimensions, with the exception that we in general have

too few measures on political action to create proper dimensions. Contacting civil servant,

contacting politician and contacting mass media build the contacting dimension. Signing

petition and demonstrating forms the manifest dimension. Work in action group or

organisation and party work form the party/organisation dimension. In previous studies,

work in other organisations than parties can both be seen as cooperative behaviour (Verba &

Nie 1972), but empirically it can also belong to the contact dimension (Teorell, Torcal &

Montero 2004). Although the explanations behind joining a party and joining an action

group probably differ, they can form a common dimension based on the fact that they are

both organisations.

The independent variable measures evaluations of the corresponding public service

institutions (public school, local health care, hospital care, elder care and public

transportation). The question used is “What is Your opinion about the service in the

municipality You live in on the following areas? The answering options are Very satisfied,

Fairly satisfied, Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, Fairly dissatisfied, Very dissatisfied and

Don’t know.

To explore under what condition the relationship between public service dissatisfaction

and political action appears two important variables shall be used. First of all, a variable

distinguishing users of a public service from non-users will be used, and second, an

interaction variable between evaluations of public service and user/non-user will be used to

investigate whether there is an extra effect of being both dissatisfied and a user on political

action. The user-non-user distinction is included as a measure of institutional contact, i.e. if

the respondents are users of public school, local health care, hospital care, elder care and

public transportation (Goul Andersen & Hoff 2001; Jarl 2001; 2004; Johansson, Nilsson &

Strömberg 2001; Kumlin 2004; Nilsson 2004). Citizens’ that are users of public service are to a

higher degree affected by the institutional design than a non-user. However, this is not to say

that non-users do not express dissatisfaction through political action. Even though I am not a

user of hospital care at this moment, perceived deterioration can affect service delivery in the

future, which might affect me. Also, all public service institutions analysed here, except elder

care, are universal institutions, i.e. means-testing does not take place to judge who are

entitled to service.

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The most important control variable included is level of education. According to

numerous research on political participation, level of education is the most important

explanatory variable of political action (Verba, Schlozman & Brady 1995; Goul Andersen &

Hoff 2001; Norris 2002). Age dummies representing difference age groups will also be used

as control variables. The reasons for this are twofold; first of all, during life citizens do not

use all public service institutions at the same extent. Second, age and participation usually

show a curve linear pattern were both the youngest and the oldest participate less than

middle aged (Norris 2002; Pettersson & Ribbhagen 2003). The third control variable is left-

right ideology. Research has shown that people to the left are both more welfare friendly

(Holmberg & Oscarsson 2004) and more inclined to take protest action than citizens to the

right (Dalton 2002). The last control variable included at this point is gender. Several studies

have shown that women, in general, participate in politics to a lower extent than men (Verba

& Nie 1972; Verba, Schlozman & Brady 1995; Norris 2002). However, the results from the

Swedish Citizen study displays a more complex relationship where women are more

politically active in their roles as parents or patients, while men are more party active and

take more contacts. But the general pattern is that there are small differences in political

action between men and women (Petersson, Westholm & Blomberg 1989; Petersson et al.

1998). Since this chapter is dealing with modes of political action, gender could be an

important variable.

Since the dependent variables are dichotomous, the analyses regarding dissatisfaction and

modes of political action are performed using logistic regression. We have chosen to treat

political action as a dichotomous variable since we don’t have any interest in knowing how

many types of e.g. contacting a citizen has done, but rather if action (contacting, manifest,

organisation) has been taken or not. To ease interpretation, post-estimations have been

performed which means that predicted probabilities for political action also will be reported

in the tables.

Exploring the relationship between public service dissatisfaction and political action

To examine the relationship between public service dissatisfaction and political action, we

shall first present some basic tables in order to provide a better understanding of the

important variables before we actually explore the relationship.

Table 1 display the service evaluations of the five public service institutions investigated

here; public school, local health care, hospital care, elder care and public transportations.

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Table 1 Evaluations of public service (per cent and opinion balance)

Very

satisfied

Fairly

satisfied

Neither

satisfied nor

dissatisfied

Fairly

dissatisfied

Very

dissatisfied Total N

Opinion

balance

User institutions

Public school 12 47 27 11 3 100 1076 +45

Local health care 15 45 23 12 5 100 1599 +43

Hospital care 17 47 23 9 4 100 1456 +51

Client institutions

Elder care 6 28 38 21 7 100 909 +6

Customer institutions

Public transportation 9 42 28 14 7 100 1367 +30

Source: National SOM survey 2004

Comment: The questions read as follows “What is Your opinion about the service in the municipality You live in on the following areas? The answering options are Very satisfied (coded as 1), Fairly satisfied (2), Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied (3), Fairly

dissatisfied (4), Very dissatisfied (5) and Don’t know. The option Don’t know has been excluded in the analysis. The opinion balance is the difference between very/fairly satisfied and fairly/very dissatisfied.

The first observation is that a majority of Swedish citizens are satisfied with the public

service they receive. In all five cases, the opinion balance is positive, indicating a larger

proportion of satisfied than dissatisfied citizens. The three institutions, public school, local

health care and hospital care show the most positive evaluations. Elder care is the public

service people are least satisfied with. The evaluations of public transportation take a middle

position between the user institutions and the client institution. These results confirms earlier

findings (see for example Nilsson 2004)

Turning to the dependent variable, political action, a special question battery were

designed to be able to match actions taken with the five welfare institutions in question.

Table 2 Political actions taken to express viewpoints (per cent who has taken the action in question)

Contacted

civil servant

Contacted politician

Contacted

mass media

Work in action

group/ organisation

Signed petition

Demon-strating

Work in

political party

Sum/ institution

User institutions

Public school 6 1 1 1 3 1 1 14

Local health care 3 1 1 0 3 1 1 10

Hospital care 3 2 1 1 4 1 1 13

Client institutions

Elder care 3 1 1 0 2 0 1 8


Public transportation 3 1 0 1 2 0 1 8

Sum/action 18 6 4 3 14 3 5 (N=1667)


Comment: The question reads as follows: ”Have you, during the last 12 months, expressed your point of view to any of the

following public institutions? For every public institution, mark with a cross in what ways You have expressed your viewpoints.” For every public service institutions, the action alternatives are No viewpoints expressed, contacted civil servant, contacted

politician, contacted mass media, work in action group/organisation, signed petition, demonstrating, work in political party. The table only displays the percentages of those who have taken action. Thus, the per centages that has not taken any varies

between 94 and 96 per cent. The sum/action and sum/institution overrates the participation levels some what since some citizens take more than one type of political action.

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Table 2 reveals that in general, participation levels are low when we explicit try to catch

welfare state targeted political action. Disregarding of public service institution, contacting

civil servants is relatively the most common action form followed by petition signing. The

remaining five action forms, contacting politician, contacting mass media, work in action

group/organisation, demonstrating and work in political party are at the same low levels

around one per cent. The table can also be read in the other direction, summing up level of

political action for every public service institution. Slightly over ten cent of the respondents

has taken some form of political action to express their opinions about public schools and

hospital care. For local health care, elder care and public transportation, the level of political

action is just under ten per cent.

It can hardly be avoided to notice two things so far: Swedish citizens are satisfied with the

service delivery of these five welfare institutions and they show very low participation

levels. But since we are here to examine a relationship, it is now time to see what happens

when we analyse these two together in a simple bivariate table. Is there a relationship

between public service dissatisfaction and political action?

Table 3 Evaluations of public service and percentage who has taken political action (per cent)

Satisfied

Neither

satisfied nor

dissatisfied Dissatisfied Difference

User institutions

Public school 13 10 34 -21

N 624 288 139

Local health care 6 6 17 -11

N 925 358 269

Hospital care 9 9 22 -13

N 915 322 180

Client institutions

Elder care 13 8 15 -2

N 302 334 247


Public transportation 6 6 16 -10

N 684 372 282


Comment: See table 1 and 2 for information on original questions. The answers Very Satisfied and Fairly Satisfied have been collapsed into Satisfied and the answers Fairly dissatisfied and Very dissatisfied have been collapsed into Dissatisfied. The seven

forms of political actions have been put together to a dichotomous index for easier interpretation. The opinion balance is the difference in political action between very/fairly satisfied and fairly/very dissatisfied.

When analysing evaluations and political actions together, interesting patterns arises. For

every institution, except elder care, the percentage who has taken political action is larger

among the dissatisfied than the satisfied. This pattern is most clear regarding public schools.

Of those satisfied with public schools, thirteen per cent report having taken some form of

political action. Among the citizens dissatisfied with public schools, the corresponding

proportion is 34 per cent. In the cases of local health care, hospital care and public

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transportation, the differences between satisfied and dissatisfied citizens’ action levels are

smaller, but still significant. Regarding elder care, we cannot see any differences in action

levels between satisfied and dissatisfied citizens.

Just stating that there seems to be a relationship between public service dissatisfaction and

political action is, however, not the whole story. One main objective is, as mentioned earlier,

to try to specify this relationship, i.e. under what conditions dissatisfaction has an impact on

political action.

First, we need to investigate the relationship between evaluations of public service and

political action between users and non-users of the difference services in question . Second,

we must include the most important explanatory variable of political participation; level of

education.

Starting with the user-non-user distinction, table 4 displays the results concerning

evaluations of public service and political action among users and non-users.

Table 4 Evaluations of public service and political action among users and non-users of public service (per cent)

Satisfied

Neither satisfied nor


Non-user User Non-user Non-user Non-user User Non-user User

Public school

Taken political action 5 17 7 14 16 44 -11 -27

N 205 417 144 142 50 89

Local health care


N 117 802 86 271 47 222

Hospital care


N 216 693 112 210 41 138

Elder care


N 175 123 234 98 173 74

Public transportation


N 108 571 133 238 86 195

Source: National SOM survey 2004.

Comment: The question on user and non-user reads as follows: “Have you or a close relative used any of the following services the last 12 months?”. The answer options are: Yes, I have used it my self, I don’t use it myself, but a close relative does and

No, neither myself or a close relative use it. The category User in the table above refers to both people who are users themselves of the particular welfare service and people where close relative is a user. The opinion balance is the difference in

political action between very/fairly satisfied and fairly /very dissatisfied for non-users and users.

A general pattern in table 4, a few cases excepted, is that users have a higher level of

political action than non-users, disregarding of how satisfied or dissatisfied they are with the

public service delivery in question. But we can also note that dissatisfied non-users and users

have a higher level of political action than satisfied non-users and users. Again, the highest

13

level of political action is found in the case of public schools. Here, we also observe the

biggest difference between dissatisfied users and non-users – 44 per cent of the users of

public school has taken political action compared to 16 per cent of the non-users. Twenty-

two per cent of the dissatisfied users of elder care have taken political action, which are ten

percentage units higher than among dissatisfied non-users. Regarding local health care and

public transportation we find no difference in political activity between dissatisfied users

and non-users. In the case of hospital care, we find that dissatisfied non-users are more

political active than dissatisfied users.

Turning to level of education in table 5, we find a less clear-cut patterns than what might

have been expected. Disregarding of evaluation of public service, citizens with high

education have a somewhat higher degree of political activity than citizens with low

education, but the differences are in general very small.

Table 5 Evaluations of public service and political activity among citizens with low and high level of education (per cent)

Satisfied

Neither satisfied nor


Low

education

High

education

Low

education

High

education

Low

education

High

education

Low

education

High

education

Public school


N 377 244 186 98 61 75

Local health care


N 565 347 211 142 134 134

Hospital care


N 564 340 187 129 94 85

Elder care

Taken political action 10 17 6 10 15 13 -5 4

N 192 104 220 110 149 97

Public transportation


N 373 306 220 148 164 115


Comment: The question on education reads as follows: ”What level of education do You have?”. Eight different options are

included in the question. Here. the category Low education consists of respondents with low or medium low education which corresponds to options between Not completed compulsory school to Finished high school. Consequently, the category High

education consists of respondents with medium high or high education, which corresponds to options between Post high school studies to Ph.D. degree. The opinion balance is the difference in political action between very/fairly satisfied and fairly /very

dissatisfied for citizens with low and high education.

The effect of dissatisfaction, i.e. that dissatisfied citizens have higher political action than

satisfied citizens, is evident in both education groups. In the case of elder care, citizens with

low education report two percentage units higher level of political action compared to

citizens with high education. This should probably be interpretated as no difference. The

14

overall result is that citizens with high education do not channel their public service

dissatisfaction through political action to a higher extent than citizens with low education.

In sum, the results so far indicate that there indeed is a relationship between public

service dissatisfaction and political action. We can also conclude that users participate to a

higher extent than non-users and that users dissatisfied with public schools and elder care

are more politically active than the non-users of these institutions. The well-known effect of

education does not arise, i.e. citizens with high levels of education do not have much have

higher levels of political action than citizens with low education. Public service

dissatisfaction seems to be a more important factor for political action related to specific

institutions than education.

Institutional design and modes of political action

The analyses so far have been treating political action as a one-dimensional phenomenon and

we have seen that there seems to be a relationship between public service dissatisfaction and

political action. However, as mentioned earlier, research on political participation usually

distinguishes between different modes of participation. The second task in this paper is to

more closely investigate if negative evaluations of public service are more related to some

forms of political actions than others. Implicit in this question is the question on institutional

design. Besides detecting possible patterns of political action, we might also se differences

between the five public service institutions. For every institution, three measures of political

action has been analysed; contacting, manifest action and action thorough organisation work.

Table 6 shows the results of public service dissatisfaction and contacting for public school,

local health care, hospital care, elder care and public transportation. The main result is that

there is a positive effect of public service dissatisfaction on contacting, i.e. citizens

dissatisfied with service delivery of various welfare institutions take political action by

contacting. Although the significance level only reaches 90 per cent (model 3) in the case of

public school, local health care, elder care and public transportation, the overall tendency is

that we can establish that there is a relationship. In all five cases, the predicted probability of

contacting is much higher among dissatisfied users than among satisfied users, and we can

also systematically note that the difference in probability of contacting between satisfied and

dissatisfied non-users is generally low. Interestingly, the user-non-user distinction seems to

work as a suppressor variable, since the effect of public service evaluation increases when

the user variable is included (compare model 1 and model 2).7 This is true for all five

institutions, even though being a user of local health care does not have a significant positive

effect on contacting.

7 Since the user-variable never is included on its own together with the evaluation variable, the conclusion about user being a suppressor variable is not correct. However, tests performed, but not shown here, confirms that the user-non-user distinction works as a suppressor variable.

15

Table 6 Effects of evaluations of public service on political action by contacting (logistic regression coefficients and predicted probabilities)

Dependent variable: Political action by contacting

Public school Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Public school User Non-user

Evaluation of service (1-5) .37*** .55** .46* P(contacting if satisfied) .06 .02

User of service (0-1) 1.68** 1.32 P(contacting if dissatisfied) .28 .10

Evaluation of service*user -.15 -.06

Education (1-4) .58***

Age 30-49 .83**

Age 50-64 .52

Age 65-85 -.42

Left-right ideology (1-5) .03

Man .21

Constant -3.13*** -4.51*** -6.63***

Pseudo R2 .02 .06 .13

N 1051 1047 1000

Local health care Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Local health care User Non-user

Evaluation of service (1-5) .44*** .81** .71* P(contacting if satisfied) .01 .00

User of service (0-1) 1.91 1.19 P(contacting if dissatisfied) .18 .06


Education (1-4) .20

Age 30-49 .86

Age 50-64 .95*

Age 65-85 1.90***


Man .07

Constant -4.33*** -6.07 -7.82***

Pseudo R2 .03 .03 .07

N 1552 1545 1469

Hospital care Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Hospital care User Non-user

Evaluation of service (1-5) .36*** .70** 1.03*** P(contacting if satisfied) .03 .00

User of service (0-1) 2.16** 3.22*** P(contacting if dissatisfied) .63 .06

Evaluation of service*user -.40 -.70**

Education (1-4) .19*

Age 30-49 .78*

Age 50-64 1.08**

Age 65-85 1.41***

Left-right ideology (1-5) -.00

Man .09

Constant -3.70*** -5.52*** -8.14***

Pseudo R2 .02 .04 .06

N 1417 1410 1339

16

Table 6 continued

Elder care Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Elder care User Non-user

Evaluation of service (1-5) .07 .33 .44* P(contacting if satisfied) .11 .01

User of service (0-1) 2.27*** 2.61*** P(contacting if dissatisfied) .41 .05


Education (1-4) .16

Age 30-49 1.40**

Age 50-64 1.65***

Age 65-85 2.01***


Man -.30

Constant -2.79*** -4.19*** -6.15***

Pseudo R2 .00 .05 .11

N 883 877 832

Public transportation Model 1 Model 2 Model 3 Public transportation User Non-user

Evaluation of service (1-5) .29** .73** .58* P(contacting if satisfied) .03 .00

User of service (0-1) 2.46* 2.04 P(contacting if dissatisfied) .21 .03


Education (1-4) .04

Age 30-49 .43

Age 50-64 .43

Age 65-85 .12


Man -.39

Constant -3.82 -6.04*** -5.24***

Pseudo R2 .01 .03 .09

N 1338 1331 1270


Comment: *** p≤.01 **p≤.05 *p≤.10. Contacting is dichotomous index were 0 indicates no action by contacting and 1 indicates action by contacting civil servant, contacting politician or contacting mass media. See table 1 and 4 for information on

‘Evaluation of service’' and ‘User of service’. Education is coded as follows: 1= Low education, 2= Medium low education, 3= Medium high education and 4=High education. Age consists of four dummy variables and the category Age 15-29 is the

reference category. The question on ideology is: Sometimes you can talk about placing political attitudes on a left-right dimension. Were would you place yourself on a left-right dimension? 1=Far to the left, 2=Slightly to the left, 3=Neither left nor

right, 4=Slightly to the right, 5=Far to the right. The predicted probabilities have been calculated from model 3.

The interaction term between evaluation and user only reaches significance in the case of

hospital care. The coefficient is negative, which indicates that there is an extra effect on

contacting by being a satisfied non-user, instead of being a dissatisfied user as indicated by

the predicted probabilities. Why this is the case when both dissatisfaction and user have a

positive effect might be explained using table 4 as help. We saw then that users had higher

action levels than non-users, but also that the effect of dissatisfaction sometimes were larger

among non-users. Worth mentioning is that the usually strong predictor of political action,

level of education, show a non-significant effect in three out of the five cases. Also, ideology

and gender does not matter, contrary to what have been found in previous studies.

The next mode of political action to investigate is manifest political action, i.e. petition

signing and demonstrating and the results are reported in table 7.

17

Table 7 Effects of evaluations of public service on manifest political action (logistic regression coefficients and predicted probabilities)

Dependent variable: Manifest political action


Evaluation of service (1-5) .58*** .13 .11 P(manifest if satisfied) .02 .04

User of service (0-1) -.54 -.65 P(manifest if dissatisfied) .03 .06

Evaluation of service*user .57 .54

Education (1-4) -.16

Age 30-49 .06

Age 50-64 -.62

Age 65-85 -1.37*


Man .03

Constant -4.63*** -4.11*** -2.83**

Pseudo R2 .04 .07 .08

N 1051 1047 1000


Evaluation of service (1-5) .44*** 1.65*** 1.77*** P(manifest if satisfied) .00 .00

User of service (0-1) 5.28** 5.43** P(manifest if dissatisfied) .83 .02

Evaluation of service*user -1.33*** -1.41***

Education (1-4) .12

Age 30-49 -.17

Age 50-64 .28

Age 65-85 .48

Left-right ideology (1-5) -.26*

Man .02

Constant -4.67*** -9.52*** -9.48***

Pseudo R2 .03 .05 .06

N 1552 1545 1469


Evaluation of service (1-5) .30*** .70** .67** P(manifest if satisfied) .03 .00

User of service (0-1) 2.11** 2.04* P(manifest if dissatisfied) .29 .05


Education (1-4) .04

Age 30-49 .59

Age 50-64 .91**

Age 65-85 .22


Man -.49*

Constant -3.74*** -5.52*** -5.01***

Pseudo R2 .01 .03 .05

N 1417 1410 1339

18

Table 7 continued


Evaluation of service (1-5) .49*** .44* .54** P(manifest if satisfied) .01 .01

User of service (0-1) .20 .62 P(manifest if dissatisfied) .11 .06


Education (1-4) .02

Age 30-49 -.44

Age 50-64 .17

Age 65-85 .40


Man -.50

Constant -4.89*** -4.97*** -4-94***

Pseudo R2 .02 .02 .07

N 883 877 832


Evaluation of service (1-5) .78*** 1.10*** 1.31*** P(manifest if satisfied) .00 .00

User of service (0-1) 1.80 1.64 P(manifest if dissatisfied) .20 .05


Education (1-4) .57**

Age 30-49 .70

Age 50-64 .82

Age 65-85 *)


Man .86*

Constant -6.29*** -7.77*** -12.03***

Pseudo R2 .08 .08 .17

N 1338 1331 1270


*) Age 65-85 predicts failure (0) perfectly and was dropped in the analysis by Stata. A new regression was performed without age 65-85 in this case since Stata wouldn’t compute predicted probabilities.

Comment: *** p≤.01 **p≤.05 *p≤.10. Manifest political action is dichotomous index were 0 indicates no manifest and 1 indicates action by signing petition o demonstrating. For information on the independent variable and the control variable, see

table 6. The predicted probabilities have been calculated from model 3.

Citizens who are dissatisfied with public school, local health care, hospital care, elder care

or public transportations have to a higher extent than satisfied citizens signed petitions and

taken part in demonstrations. However, in the multivariate models, the relationship between

public school dissatisfaction and political action becomes insignificant.

Again, the user-non-user variable seems to work as a suppressor variable, since the

relationship between evaluation of service and political action becomes stronger when this

variable is included. To be a user of local health care or hospital care has a direct positive

effect on manifest political action and in the case of local health care we also see the negative

sign of the interaction term, indicating the extra effect on manifest political action by being a

satisfied non-user. This is contrary to the predicted probabilities which show exactly the

opposite, i.e. a strong effect of being a dissatisfied user. Just as earlier, the control variables

show no or weak effects on political action. However, one result is worth mentioning. As

19

indicated by the negative sign before Man concerning hospital care, women have to a higher

extent taken manifest political action. This result is in line with findings from the Citizens

study discussed earlier, i.e. women are more politically active as patients or close relatives.

Summing up from table 7, dissatisfaction with public services of local health care, hospital

care, elder care and public transportation are, to varying degrees, related to manifest political

action. We find the strongest evidence for this among dissatisfied users of local health care.

The last mode of political action investigated in this paper is work in organisation,

including both work in organisation or action group and work in political party. The results

of the logistic regressions between evaluations of service and work in organisation are

reported in table 8.

Compared to contacting and manifest political action, the relationship between public

service dissatisfaction and political action by work in organisation is much weaker. Neither

dissatisfaction with public schools nor local health care have significant effects on work in

organisation. We do find a significant positive relationship between dissatisfaction with

hospital care and public transportation and work in organisation, although the effect of

dissatisfaction with public transportation only reaches significance at the 90 per cent level. In

the case of elder care, we even find a negative relationship between evaluation and work in

organisation. This indicates that citizens who are satisfied with elder care to a higher degree

than citizens dissatisfied with elder care work in political parties and action groups. The

effect of public service dissatisfaction on work in organisation is strongest in the case of

hospital care. We can also see that being a user of hospital care has a positive effect on action.

Again, the interaction effect shows a negative sign.

One very interesting result from table 8 is not only the overall weak relationship between

dissatisfaction and work in organisation, which also is nicely indicated by the predicted

probabilities, but also that level of education has a significant positive effect on this form of

political action in all five cases. In other words, citizens with high level of education take

political action through work in organisation to a higher extent than citizens with lower

education. This indicates not only that citizens do not channels their grievances through

work in organisation, but also that this form of action demands more individual resources,

indicated by the education effect.

To sum up, and trying to answer the research questions posed in the introducing part of

this paper, we have found that citizens who are dissatisfied with public service are more

inclined to contact politicians, civil servants and mass media and this goes for public school,

local health care, hospital care, elder care as well as public transportation. Public service

dissatisfaction is also, except for public schools, connected to manifest political action, i.e.

petition signing and demonstrating. However, citizens do not channel their public service

dissatisfaction through work in organisations to the same extent and we only find a positive

and significant relationship in the case of hospital care and public transportation.

20

Table 8 Effects of evaluations of public service on political action by work in organisation/party (logistic regression coefficients and predicted probabilities)

Dependent variable: Political action by work in party/organisation


Evaluation of service (1-5) .21 .29 .29 P(organisation work if satisfied) .02 .00

User of service (0-1) 1.10 1.49 P(organisation work if dissatisfied) .05 .01



Age 30-49 .33

Age 50-64 .63

Age 65-85 1.01


Man .11

Constant -4.28*** -5.15 -7.00

Pseudo R2 .00 .02 .07

N 1051 1047 1000


Evaluation of service (1-5) .25 -.03 .13 P(organisation work if satisfied) .00 .01

User of service (0-1) -.96 -1.11 P(organisation work if dissatisfied) .01 .02



Age 30-49 -.56

Age 50-64 .43

Age 65-85 1.86**

Left-right ideology (1-5) -.44**

Man .50

Constant -5.15*** -4.32*** -6.92***

Pseudo R2 .01 .01 .13

N 1552 1545 1469


Evaluation of service (1-5) .32 .99** 1.32*** P(organisation work if satisfied) .00 .00

User of service (0-1) 2.82* 3.83** P(organisation work if dissatisfied) .32 .01

Evaluation of service*user -.92* -1.37***


Age 30-49 -.23

Age 50-64 .58

Age 65-85 2.21**

Left-right ideology (1-5) -.62***

Man .89*

Constant -5.06*** -7.22 -11.06***

Pseudo R2 .01 .03 .19

N 1417 1410 1339

21

Table 8 continued


Evaluation of service (1-5) -.48* -.87** -.88* P(organisation work if satisfied) .02 .06

User of service (0-1) -.96 -1.14 P(organisation work if dissatisfied) .00 .00



Age 30-49 -.08

Age 50-64 .97

Age 65-85 2.00*


Man .41

Constant -2.68*** 2.11*** -5.16***

Pseudo R2 .02 .05 .17

N 883 877 832


Evaluation of service (1-5) .43** 1.56* 1.68* P(organisation work if satisfied) .00 .00

User of service (0-1) 5.94 5.86 P(organisation work if dissatisfied) .46 .00

Evaluation of service*user -1.17 -1.15


Age 30-49 -2.12*

Age 50-64 .45

Age 65-85 1.39**

Left-right ideology (1-5) -.45**

Man .45

Constant -5.44 -11.03*** -12.77***

Pseudo R2 .02 .05 .18

N 1338 1331 1272


Comment: *** p≤.01 **p≤.05 *p≤.10. Political action by work in party/organisation dichotomous index were 0 indicates no such work and 1 indicates work in organisation/action group or in a political party. For information on the independent variable

and the control variable, see table 6.

Turning to differences in institutional design, a distinction was made between user, client

and customer institutions. We have not found any systematic pattern according to this

distinction or vice versa. Public transportation, a customer institution, does not

systematically differ from client or user institutions. What we have found is that the results

of public school differ from the other institutions. The relationship between public school

dissatisfaction and political actions is only evident for contacting. In the case of evaluation of

public school and manifest political action and work in organisation, the relationship is

insignificant. Something that is systematic is that the user-non-user distinction in the case of

hospital care has a direct positive effect on contacting, manifest action and work in

organisation, but the interaction effect of dissatisfaction with hospital care and the user-non-

user distinction is as shown negative on contacting and work in organisation. Also, hospital

care is the institutions where we find the most stable results: disregarding of mode of

22

political action, dissatisfaction with hospital care has a positive and solid effect (in terms of

significance).

Welfare State Institutions as Opportunity Structures for Political Action

This paper has provided some first empirical findings regarding the relationship between

public service dissatisfaction and political action. Besides investigating how dissatisfaction

relates to different modes of political action, an important aim has been to include the

concept of institutionalised citizen empowerment into the analysis and compare the

relationship between different public service institutions. The core idea behind this is to

investigate to what extent welfare state institutions are opportunity structures of political

action.

To answer the first question posed in this paper, is there a relationship between public

service dissatisfaction and political action, is relatively easy. The answer is yes. Citizens

dissatisfied with public school, local health care, hospital care and public transportation take

political action to a higher extent than satisfied citizens. When we treat political action as a

one-dimensional phenomenon, elder care is the only exception with no difference between

satisfied and dissatisfied citizens. However, it should be added that a majority of dissatisfied

citizens do not take any political action. These results show the necessity to elaborate this

relationship – the differences between satisfied and dissatisfied citizens’ political action were

generally quite small. Two conditions were included to elaborate the relationship: the

distinction between users and non-users of the different public services in question and level

of education, and both provided to be useful. In general, users of public service take more

political action than non-users. But the difference between dissatisfied users and non-users

were not clear cut. Level of education did not provide the well-known pattern – there were

no major differences between citizens with low and high education Instead, the results

clearly showed that the effect of dissatisfaction was more important.

The second step in this paper was to create action modes, rather than adding all kind of

political action into an index. Starting with contacting, we found a systematic relationship

between public service dissatisfaction and contacting for all five service institutions. Also, we

found evidence of higher contacting levels among dissatisfied users than dissatisfied non-

users and also higher compared to satisfied users and non-users respectively. In general, the

effect of dissatisfaction increased when the user-variable was included, indicating that user

of public service works as a suppressor variable. We also found a relationship between

public service dissatisfaction and manifest political action for all institutions except public

school and again, the level of political action, in this case manifest action, were was highest

among dissatisfied users. Work in organisation/political party showed a different pattern

than contacting and manifest political action. The relationship between evaluations of public

service and work in organisation was both weaker and less frequent. In the case of elder care,

23

we even found a weak negative relationship, indicating that citizens satisfied with elder care

are more active than dissatisfied citizens. These results point to a very interesting conclusion:

organisations and political parties fail to channel citizens’ dissatisfaction with public

services. Both contacting and manifest action is relatively more widespread and dissatisfied

citizens seem to take these forms of actions disregarding of institutions. Interestingly, level of

education proved to be an important explanatory variable only in the case of work in

organisation which indicates that this form of political action demands more individual

resources from citizens.

The third aim with this paper was compare the relationship between public service

dissatisfaction and political action across welfare state institutions. In order to compare the

five institutions, a distinction between user-, client- and customer institutions were used.

However, this distinction did not provide us which much systematic knowledge on how

institutional design interacts with the relationship. This does not mean that institutional

design , measured as degree of institutionalised citizen empowerment, does not matter. We

have two findings that points to that institutional design probably is of importance. The first

to point out is that the results for the public school area deviate somewhat from the other

public service institutions. Citizens dissatisfied with public school take political action by

contacting, but not by manifest action or work in organisations. Public school is the only

institution where the relationship is significant for one mode of political action only. Second,

users of hospital care take political action through contacting, manifest action and work in

organisation to a higher extent than non-users of hospital care. Third, dissatisfaction with

hospital care leads to higher levels of political action disregarding of mode. No other area

show more stable and systematic results. These results indicated that the concept of

institutionalised citizen empowerment needs to be further developed. Besides including

more dimensions, we must be able to differentiate between institutions that today are

lumped together as user-institutions.

One dimension not included in the present concept of empowerment is user-influence. If

we take user-influence into consideration, the results regarding public school does not

support the theory of participatory democracy. Since public school is the area where

experiences of user-influence are most widespread, a result showing a significant

relationship between public school dissatisfaction and all three action forms would have

been more expected. Instead, the results indicates the opposite interpretation. Maybe the

existence of voice-opportunities, in terms of user-influence, makes it less important to

channel dissatisfaction through political action outside of the welfare state institution?

To sum up, this paper has provided empirical evidence that there is a relationship

between public service dissatisfaction and political action. We can also state that

dissatisfaction is mainly channelled through contacting and manifest political action. But to

be able to draw any conclusions regarding the welfare state as an opportunity structure of

24

political actions, the tool used in order to measure institutional design did not provide us

with any answers. We can, however, say that the politics of the welfare state in general, and

the output of public services in particular, affects citizens’ political actions. But in order to

understand the differences between institutions, we need a more fine tuned tool measuring

empowerment. More information about the characteristics of public school, local health care,

hospital care, elder care and public transportation is needed in order to fully understand the

institutional differences and interpret the relationship between welfare state targeted

dissatisfaction and political action according to them.

25

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