Core 1 Macro-Meso-Micro Results Conclusion

1 Setup

2 Bringing the Levels Together: Country, Region, and Individual Mechanisms

The theoretical framework starts from a simple idea: political solidarity is an individual attitude, but it is formed in broader country and regional contexts. The results therefore have to be read across levels: macro-level country differences, meso-level regional conditions, and micro-level individual mechanisms. This cross-level reading is useful, but it also has an important limit. The country comparison contains seven national cases, or eight if East and West Germany are treated separately. This is enough for a descriptive comparison. It allows us to ask whether the country ordering fits the theoretical expectations about welfare regimes and governance contexts. It is not enough, however, to estimate macro-level effects with credible statistical leverage. This is a known limitation in country-level and multilevel comparative designs with few country units (Bryan and Jenkins 2016). The macro-level comparison in Figure 1 should therefore be read as a descriptive benchmark: it asks whether the country ordering is consistent with welfare-regime theory, not whether welfare regimes have a statistically identified effect on political solidarity.

Read descriptively, the country pattern broadly fits the theory: mean solidarity differs across welfare-state contexts in the expected direction. To group the countries, we draw on the comparative welfare-regime literature: Esping-Andersen’s distinction between social-democratic and conservative welfare regimes provides the classic starting point, while Ferrera’s Southern model and Fenger’s post-communist extension justify treating the Mediterranean and Central-Eastern European cases as distinct regime contexts (Esping-Andersen 1990; Ferrera 1996; Fenger 2007). Mean general political solidarity, measured here by the territorial solidarity index, ranges from 3.05 in Croatia to 3.69 in Sweden. Sweden, the only social-democratic case in the sample, has the highest mean. Spain and Italy, the two Mediterranean cases, also sit relatively high in the country ordering, with an average of 3.47. The conservative and post-communist cases are lower and more mixed: Germany and France average 3.13 across the conservative pair, while Poland and Croatia average 3.14 across the post-communist pair. This pattern should not be read as a formal regime test. With so few cases, welfare institutions cannot be separated from fiscal capacity, corruption control, political histories, and other national differences. Still, it provides a useful baseline for the rest of the results. Political solidarity is not distributed evenly across national settings, and the ordering is broadly consistent with the idea that welfare-state contexts shape how citizens judge redistribution for others.

Figure 1: Country means for general political solidarity by welfare-regime context. The plotted measure is the territorial solidarity index. The figure is descriptive and should not be read as a macro-level test of welfare-regime effects.

Table 1 gives the same comparison in more detail. It places the solidarity means alongside welfare-regime classification, corruption control, perceived governance, institutional trust, service evaluations, and the external EQI service-quality indicator. The purpose is not to test regime effects, but to show what kinds of country contexts accompany the observed solidarity levels.

Table 1: Country means and contextual indicators.

Country	Welfare regime	Control of corruption	Territorial solidarity	Perceived governance	Institutional trust	Service evaluations	Country-mean EQI service quality
Sweden	Social-democratic	High	3.687	0.563	0.557	0.569	1.254
Spain	Mediterranean	Middle	3.543	0.429	0.402	0.455	0.152
Italy	Mediterranean	Middle	3.394	0.424	0.428	0.419	-0.704
Poland	Post-Communist	Middle	3.231	0.457	0.429	0.485	-0.932
Germany	Conservative	High	3.202	0.496	0.489	0.502	0.786
France	Conservative	Middle	3.055	0.426	0.378	0.472	0.126
Croatia	Post-Communist	Low	3.049	0.370	0.318	0.421	-1.287

The meso-level evidence qualifies this baseline. The regional models ask a narrower question. Do respondents living in higher-quality NUTS2 regions, or in regions that are richer relative to their own country, report higher political solidarity once individual predictors and country context are taken into account? The regional indicators draw on the European Quality of Government Index, which captures subnational variation in corruption, impartiality, and public-service quality (Charron, Dijkstra, and Lapuente 2014). The models do not show robust direct regional associations. Both estimates are small and statistically uncertain. The estimate for regional public-service quality is beta = -0.01, 95% CI [-0.046, 0.025], p = 0.571. The estimate for relative regional income is beta = 0.014, 95% CI [-0.01, 0.038], p = 0.257. These estimates do not mean that regional context is irrelevant. Rather, they suggest that the available regional indicators do not explain much additional variation once individual attitudes, legitimacy beliefs, social norms, and controls are included. One plausible interpretation is that regional and country contexts matter partly by shaping the perceptions through which citizens judge redistribution, institutions, and other citizens (Svallfors 2013). A second, more methodological possibility is that the linked regional indicators are too coarse, or the within-country variation too noisy, to detect direct regional differences in this design.

The clearest empirical pattern appears at the individual level. In the full model, solidarity is most consistently associated with ideology, social trust, institutional trust, service evaluations, contribution norms, perceived capacity, and need or risk. This should not be read as a purely individual-level explanation. Instead, it clarifies where the present data have the most leverage. Country contexts provide different descriptive baselines, and regional context remains theoretically relevant, but the strongest survey evidence points to the perceptions and orientations through which citizens evaluate the solidarity system. In substantive terms, citizens are more willing to support redistribution for others when the social and institutional environment appears credible: when others are expected to contribute, institutions are trusted, and public services are seen as fair and effective.

Figure 2 summarizes this interpretation across the three levels. The macro layer refers to country context, the meso layer to regional context, and the micro layer to individual attitudes, social norms, and perceptions of state legitimacy. The overall conclusion is cautious but still substantive: political solidarity is shaped by institutional contexts, but in these data it is most clearly observed through individual trust, perceived legitimacy, and evaluations of system performance.

Figure 2: Summary of the evidence across macro, meso, and micro levels.

3 References

Esping-Andersen, Gosta. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Bryan, Mark L., and Stephen P. Jenkins. 2016. “Multilevel Modelling of Country Effects: A Cautionary Tale.” European Sociological Review 32(1): 3-22.

Charron, Nicholas, Lewis Dijkstra, and Victor Lapuente. 2014. “Regional Governance Matters: Quality of Government within European Union Member States.” Regional Studies 48(1): 68-90.

Fenger, H. J. M. 2007. “Welfare Regimes in Central and Eastern Europe: Incorporating Post-Communist Countries in a Welfare Regime Typology.” Contemporary Issues and Ideas in Social Sciences 3(2): 1-30.

Ferrera, Maurizio. 1996. “The ‘Southern Model’ of Welfare in Social Europe.” Journal of European Social Policy 6(1): 17-37. https://doi.org/10.1177/095892879600600102.

Svallfors, Stefan. 2013. “Government Quality, Egalitarianism, and Attitudes to Taxes and Social Spending: A European Comparison.” European Political Science Review 5(3): 363-380.