A growing literature focuses on the dynamic interplay between policy and public opinion and feedback effects that binds together the chain of democratic responsiveness. Citizens are assumed to respond in relation to policy, and decision makers should then ideally respond in return by adjusting policy. Theoretically, we focus on testing the Power Resource Approach (PRA) (Palme & Korpi 1998). The conference paper uses survey-experiments to tease out how Swedish residents perceive the welfare state in order to understand why they by and large support it. Hereby we move away from the rational choice assumptions of the PRA. Our preliminary findings are that respondents who receive information stimuli respond significantly different from respondent who do not. Moreover, the changes tend to challenge core assumptions made by PRA.
