Algunes notes sobre el llegat epistolar

Picking up on the discussion about individual egalitarian ideology, I elect to focus on the country-level social norm of individualism. Individualism prioritizes personal time and freedom, and appropriate rewards for individual hard work (Hofstede 1984:148-58). Less individualism is associated with collective time usage and collective solutions to problems on the other hand. Societies with stronger social norms of individualism favor equality of opportunity. In the context of employment for example, societies with higher individualism favor independent adaptations to and styles of work and thus unequal pay based on individual performance. This contrasts with lower levels of individualism in a

society which favor order and submission to collective work style and hierarchical pay schemes that are more equal across jobs, in other words equality of outcome. In the context of social policy, higher levels of individualism should lead to policies that leave individuals in charge of their own acquisition of welfare. Lower levels in contrast should favor collective provision of welfare, regardless of individual efforts. Thus, greater individualism should lead to public opinion less in support of social policy.

Strong individualism as a social norm does not guarantee that all persons in a society are ideologically individualists. Individualism is a 'primary ideology' to use the framework of Wegener and Liebig (1995) and all persons in an individualistic society (such as the US) will be aware that in the context of work, welfare, family and many other social interactions, that there is an expectation of individualism and this will shape their actions and thoughts. There is an understanding that equality of opportunity and resulting unequal outcomes based on individual freedom and expression is 'normal' for an individualistic social context. However, many individuals will hold individual ideologies, and these may impact their public opinions to be at odds with the dominant social norms, for any number of reasons such as competing group norms (i.e. 'secondary ideologies' or in-group bias) or self-interest (i.e. SES). Overall the norm of individualism should shape the public to be less supportive of collective welfare and redistribution.

Individualism as a social norm (i.e. primary ideology of a country), institutionalized in employment, religions, schools and etc. is opposite in many ways to egalitarian ideology as discussed in section 2.2. However, individualism favors individual freedom, work and gain, and egalitarianism is not necessarily opposed to these things; however, egalitarians seek to redistribute individual gains so that society has a more equal distribution of resources and incomes. I do not want to confuse the reader so I will elect to stay away from the term egalitarianism in the context of social institutions because I

have already used it in reference to individual ideology. Thus, I will point to collectivism as the preferred term to capture a social norm opposite to individualism. But I caution that it is possible to have social norms that favor both collectivism and individualism, for example in Germany there is a strong sense of collective social control, following the rules and keeping society in order, while at the same time there is great differences in individual outcomes based on individual abilities and work2. In fact Germany is the most individualistic of the otherwise collectivistic societies of Europe (Hofstede 1984). So there is an axis of individualism-collectivism, but there are many types of individualisms and collectivisms.

The research that is relevant for individualism at the level of social institution and its impact on public opinion requires a broad understanding of individualism. Studies struggle to capture this term explicitly. What individualism is and what constitutes an individualistic society is the subject of many debates (Oyserman, Coon, and Kemmelmeier 2002). The individualism Hofstede measured was related most primarily to the way individuals behaved in an organizational work context, and how the patterning of this across countries was evidence of those societies' divergent social norms. I summarize only a snippet of the empirical literature here and try to draw attention to the fact that there are more or less individualistic norms in every country, that these norms are strong and pervasive, and that they shape public opinion.

Research on the US often referred to as the "national values" approach, supports the idea that individualistic norms shape public opinion to oppose social policy (C. Brooks and Manza 2007). This is based on the extensive research of Lipset (1963, 1992)

2 _{The author is aware of the concept of tight and loose cultures (Carpenter 2000; Triandis 2004), as}

something that captures such a division as in the German case, which would be considered a somewhat individualistic country but with a tight culture (similar to Hofstede's uncertainty avoidance measure). Although, the axis of tight and loose as a way of distinguishing countries is a fruitful avenue of future research, it is largely in the field of cross-cultural psychology and falls beyond the focus and scope of the present study.

on American norms of equality of opportunity and individual achievement of outcomes. Tests of hypotheses derived from this approach often focus on individual-level data. The effect of the social norm is inferred from measuring individual ideologies as a proxy for how much individuals subscribe to the social norms. This is somewhat dangerous ecologically; however, large-scale representative surveys should allow for distinctions to be drawn across countries while controlling for individual-level characteristics, just as Hofstede did in his work on individualism. Findings show that level of identification with American individualism leads to reduced individual support of social policy (Fine 1992); something also found in specific policy areas such as guaranteed jobs and government provided health insurance (Feldman 1983), welfare spending and food stamps (Feldman 1988), and spending on the most needy (Jacoby 2006). Linos and West (2003) show that ideology about the role of self-determination in getting ahead in life (i.e. individualism) leads to reduced public opinion toward welfare policy in Norway, Australia and the US.

Some scholars have been able to show societal level effects of individualism (or individualism-like factors) on public opinion. Blekesaune and Quadagno (2003) find that egalitarian norms at the country-level increase support of social policy in 24 countries, mostly in Western and Eastern Europe. Research on four Nordic countries reveals that a range of values including universalism (a partial inverse of individualism focused on equality of outcomes) explain some of the class based differences in public opinion toward social inequality (C. Brooks and Svallfors 2010: Table 5). A similar finding exists in analogous research showing that universalism leads to public support for immigration across 21 advanced democracies (Schwartz 2007). These few studies offer direct, as opposed to inferred, evidence on the linkage.

Research on deservingness criteria also supports my individualism hypothesis. Deservingness criteria are widely held views that form the basis for how members of a

public determine why people are poor, i.e. they are norms. These criteria are often on an axis from laziness and lack of effort, to structure and bad luck as explanatory factors. Individualists are expected to see the poor as responsible for their state of being, i.e. they failed to achieve after being granted equal opportunities. Whereas collectivists are expected to see the poor as a product of cumulative disadvantage, and structural or societal disadvantages that they have no control over. Thus, individualism may be inferred based on a society's normative deservingness criteria. Research on deservingness consistently shows patterns of higher blame of the poor for their position (i.e. individualists) as linked to less support of redistributive policies (Van Oorschot 2000; Larsen 2008). A study by Petersen et al. (2011) in Denmark suggests that egalitarianism and deservingness work in concert to shape public opinion, i.e. that they co-vary in predicting public opinion. This is similar in the broad reaching study of Mehrtens (2004) of many advanced welfare states which demonstrates that blame the poor (people should provide for themselves) and anti-redistribution (a presumable result of individualism) are cross-nationally correlated.

Based on my institutional framework and the hypothesis that social norms shape public opinions, and based on the inferences from individual-level findings and especially the evidence of country-level effects; I predict that countries that have stronger individualism as a social norm will have public opinions less supportive of social policy.