Determinants of Preferences on the Role of the State: Cross-Country Comparisons and Turkey Case

The study aims at to examine the preferences and demands of citizens on the role of the government in the extent of dichotomy of government-market. This task is fulfilled through at the country level analyses and at the individual level for Turkey. The study proposes that the citizens’ preferences and attitudes toward welfare state and redistribution could be explained by the differences between the countries’ economic and social institutions at the country level, and by social, economic, political and psychological factors at the individual level. The data employed in the study has been obtained from the dataset collected by the World Value Survey (WVS) and European Values Survey (EVS). The comparison at country level indicates that pro-government preferences increase in the most of the countries by the time. Another fact is that the average of individualistic/collectivist attitudes is correlated with the per capita income level of countries. Attitudes favor of redistribution are positively correlated with per capita GDP, while attitudes favor public ownership and government responsibility are negatively correlated with it. Finally, we analyzed the individual-level determinants for Turkey data. Results revealed the evidences on significance of income level, subjective wellbeing (happiness and life satisfaction), generalized trust, confidence on government and private sector firms, political views and religiousness in order to determine the preferences on redistribution and ownership, along with demographic characteristics such as gender, age