Purpose

This article aims to explore whether and how economic, political and demographic municipal conditions shape citizens' attitudes regarding decentralised social policies.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors analysed the 2018 wave of the Dutch Local Election Studies, which includes a novel survey item asking respondents whether they prefer local social policies to be primarily: (1) protection-based, (2) cohesion-building or (3) activation-based. The authors appended context indicators to that survey and performed multilevel logistic regression analyses (1,913 respondents nested in 336 municipalities).

Findings

At the individual level, these preferences are affected by gender, age, income, education and political inclination, as expected. However, preferences towards local social policies are not shaped by local economic, demographic or political conditions. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for future research.

Originality/value

By using unique data, including a newly developed survey item, this study is the first to explore whether and how municipal conditions shape preferences regarding local welfare. Understanding those preferences is increasingly important as many Western European countries have decentralised swathes of social policies from the national to the local level in recent decades.

中文翻译：

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当地情况是否会影响对当地社会政策的态度？探索经济、政治和人口状况的作用

目的

本文旨在探讨经济、政治和人口城市条件是否以及如何影响公民对分散社会政策的态度。

设计/方法/方法

作者分析了 2018 年荷兰地方选举研究浪潮，其中包括一项新的调查项目，询问受访者是否更喜欢地方社会政策主要是：（1）基于保护，（2）凝聚力或（3）激活-基于。作者在该调查中附加了上下文指标并进行了多级逻辑回归分析（1,913 名受访者嵌套在 336 个城市）。

发现

在个人层面，正如预期的那样，这些偏好受到性别、年龄、收入、教育和政治倾向的影响。然而，对当地社会政策的偏好不受当地经济、人口或政治条件的影响。作者讨论了这些发现对未来研究的影响。

原创性/价值

通过使用包括新开发的调查项目在内的独特数据，本研究首次探讨了市政条件是否以及如何影响对当地福利的偏好。了解这些偏好变得越来越重要，因为近几十年来，许多西欧国家已将社会政策从国家层面分散到地方层面。