Overcoming the Pitfalls of Decommodification and Generosity Indices: Towards a Fsqca-Based Index of Welfare Stateness

As the dependent variable issue continues to be a problem in comparative welfare state research, measurement issues alongside with conceptualization remains on the agenda. This paper aims to introduce a new and potentially more 'valid' index based on Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis (fsQCA) for measuring welfare stateness. It shows that the leading state-of-the-art welfare state measurement instruments, Decommodification Index and Benefit Generosity Index, suffer from a set of validity problems that stem from their quantitative approach to measuring welfare stateness. Especially the Decommodification Index has serious problems with regard to discontinuities in the scoring, treatment of outliers and the aggregation of scores. While the Benefit Generosity Index avoids some of these problems by using more sophisticated mathematical techniques we show that it can remedy only some of these problems, but not all given that the quantitative approach employed in these datasets inevitably relies on uncalibrated data. Thus both indices may fall short of accurately reflecting differences between welfare states. As an alternative to these instruments we develop an index of welfare stateness grounded in fsQCA. We demonstrate that since QCA rests on calibrating data based on theoretically informed external criteria and allows for the aggregation of scores through logical operators, this index circumvents the usual problems associated with the conventional measurement instruments based on a quantitative approach. This paper, therefore, also attests to the potential of QCA as a method that could be utilized, not only in causal inferences and ideal-type analysis but also for measurement and ranking purposes.