This open access publication deals with the operationalisation of the welfare state as an
independent variable. To study how welfare states affect social inequality individual
behaviour attitudes and more in different countries an empirical operationalisation of the
welfare state or specific elements of social policy is required. However this
operationalisation is fraught with some important problems. These problems essentially relate
to one point: while there are a large number of contributions dealing with the measurement of
differences between welfare states per se and as a dependent variable there is a lack of
feasible recommendations for a standardised operationalisation of welfare stateness as an
independent variable.So far there has been no systematic investigation of how such different
approaches may affect the results and their comparability. Also missing is an in-depth
conceptual discussion of which features of the welfare state are particularly relevant for
explaining certain effects. This book fills both gaps. First it exposes the pitfalls of
existing approaches and shows how much empirical results can vary depending on the
operationalisation chosen. Second it proposes a framework for a standardised conceptualisation
and operationalisation of social policies as independent variables that constrains operational
decisions in a theoretically meaningful way.
