Citation

Martinussen PE. Scand. J. Polit. Stud. 2008; 31(2): 149-172.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2008, Nordic Political Science Association, Publisher John Wiley and Sons)

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-9477.2008.00200.x

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A striking common characteristic in many Western countries at the turn of the millennium is the debate on the role of private actors in public health care systems. Following the long line of Norwegian political scientists paying attention to attitudes towards privatization, this article uses data from 2005 on medical specialists to investigate their preferences for private welfare services, and to uncover the relative role of political ideology and self-interest in affecting their attitudes. So far, few attempts have been made to test in depth the impact of ideology and self-interest as alternative explanations of the attitudes of a professional group toward a policy issue that is important to its interests. The analysis documents the fact that both public and private specialists display scepticism towards leaving welfare services in the hands of private actors. The empirical model for the multivariate analysis builds on the large body of literature on political attitudes, and incorporates variables that are derived from economic and psychological theories in order to test the impact of ideology and subjective self-interest (emphasis on high salary for job satisfaction) and objective self-interest (private economy). In addition, the model also controls for a vector of individual characteristics and professional background. For the group of full-time public specialists, both subjective and objective self-interest, together with ideology, turns out to be the major determinants of view on private welfare services. The attitudes of the private specialists are, on the other hand, not at all affected by self-interest – only by ideology.