In this chapter, we ask several simple questions. How many species are there, both named and unnamed? How fast are species now going extinct? How fast do species go extinct normally? And how fast do they diversify and thus might be able to recover from the current massive losses? Finally, where are extinctions concentrated, and how can we use this information to prevent extinctions?

This deceptively simple question has a rich – and even theological – pedigree. Westwood (1833) speculated ‘On the probable number of species of insects in the Creation’.

Humanity’s future will be shaped by the portfolio of capital assets we inherit and choose to pass on to our descendants, and by the balance we strike between the portfolio and the size of our population. So it makes sense to include population on the list of a society’s assets and build an overarching study of our relationship with our descendants and with nature by dividing assets into three categories: produced capital (buildings, roads, ports, machines, instruments), human capital (population, health, education, knowledge and skills) and natural capital (biodiversity, ecosystems, subsoil resources). In this Introduction we offer a perspective on the chapters that follow by summarising salient aspects of humanity’s troubled relationship with the biosphere.

In Chapter two we found that welfare state support is still high in the Netherlands, as it is in many other European welfare states. However, this does not imply that people oppose the changes that have taken place in welfare state policies during the last two decades. On the contrary. We concluded that support for the welfare state in transition is based on an increasingly shared normative ideal of obligatory reciprocity and on perceptions of deservingness. Public opinion about the welfare state and welfare state policies appear to develop in the same direction. In this chapter, we delve deeper into the sociology of welfare state support. The social process of individualisation is often suggested to undermine welfare state support. However, we have not found a decrease in welfare state support. In this chapter we therefore investigate in more detail the claim that individualisation undermines welfare state support. We make a distinction between cultural (or normative) individualisation and (structural) individualisation in social relations. These processes of individualisation appear to have different effects on welfare state support. By making this distinction in different processes of individualisation we are able to explain continued high support for the welfare state. Individualisation not only appears to undermine welfare state support, under certain conditions it can also fuel welfare state support.

Introduction

In the literature pertaining to the legitimacy of the welfare state, it is often implied that there is, or should be, a crisis of the welfare state for many different reasons. One of the reasons most often mentioned is the process of individualisation (e.g. Giddens 1994; Inglehart 1997; Trommel and Van der Veen 1999). Yet, while most authors use the same term, the conceptualisation of individualisation differs widely, and with that the reasons for it causing an alleged decline in welfare state legitimacy. While the number of interpretations and conceptualisations of individualisation may be numerous, most explanations boil down to two central ideas of cultural and structural individualisation (e.g. Atkinson 2007: 353).

Cultural individualisation implies growing ideals of individual liberty and freedom. A great number of studies have shown that in the Netherlands, similar to the rest of the Western world, people increasingly emphasise ideals of individual freedom, self-actualisation and individual level political participation (e.g. Inglehart 1977, 1997; Duyvendak 2004), and that the importance of socially collectivist values is diminishing (Flanagan and Lee 2003; Houtman 2003; Inglehart 1997).

Social solidarity is one of the central pillars of the welfare state. In this chapter, we investigate to what extent the welfare state is supported by public opinion. We see support for the welfare state as an important indicator of social solidarity. First, we investigate whether welfare state support is diminishing, as is often suggested. We fi nd that in reality, welfare state support is not decreasing. Rather, it has been constant or has even increased during the last ten to fi fteen years. Given the fact that welfare state policies are changing, what does this high level of welfare state support mean? Does it mean the public opposes the retrenchment taking place in social policies, or does it mean the public supports these changes? To answer these questions, the second part of this chapter focuses on investigating the nature of social solidarity: Under which circumstances and with whom are people willing to share risks? We try to answer this question by investigating how people think about social risks, about deservingness and about the normative foundations of social policy. Our conclusion is that the welfare state is still fi rmly supported by public opinion because the developments in social policies are in line with developments in public opinion. Both are developing in the direction of increased conditionality and obligatory reciprocity.

Support for welfare state (reform)

It is often argued that developments in Dutch public opinion are diametrically opposed to the direction in which Dutch welfare policy is changing. Research from the Netherlands Institute for Social Research (Sociaal Cultureel Planbureau; SCP) demonstrates overwhelming welfare state support among the Dutch population and suggests that people more or less reject ongoing efforts to reform and retrench the Dutch welfare state (Becker 2005). Various authors have pointed to comparable circumstances abroad: high levels of welfare state support are accompanied by policies aimed at reform and retrenchment (Ringen 1987; Kaase and Newton 1995; Svallfors and Taylor-Gooby 1999).

Allegedly high welfare state support is also contrary to predictions in academia, which claim there is an emerging ‘crisis of the welfare state’. Social scientists and economists have long argued that there are certain perverse mechanisms within the system that undermine the welfare state and its legitimacy (Murray 1984; De Swaan 1988; Hirschman 1980).