Cultural Resistance to Policy Change: Welfare Privatization, Policy Feedback, and the Moral Economy of Welfare

Social policy research posits that people adapt to policy change by aligning their preferences and institutional expectations through habituation. At face value, this policy feedback theory conflicts with theories of moral economy, which suggests that people share durable cultural repertoires regarding the meaning of the good life and good society. Deploying a large number of qualitative interviews, this study analyzes whether and how people resist or adapt to welfare privatization polices in Sweden and Denmark. The analysis identifies and compares cultural repertoires incompatible across the state-market boundary in the contexts of health care and education. Equality and efficiency are identified as key values in the moral economy of welfare, whereas profit and selectivity are market values that interviewees resist and reject in the context of welfare. In contrast, many justify the individual right to buy welfare in the market. The findings suggest that policy changes that cross sectorial boundaries become legitimate only if multiple notions of cultural worth are involved. Attempts to justify privatization policies take place as cultural reconfiguration and interpretation, rather than changed preferences and expectations.