Justice and Public Opinion from a Comparative Perspective A review of Toril Aalberg: Achieving Justice. Comparative Public Opinion on Income Distribution. Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2003. Steffen Mau 1,2 and Sonja Wrobel 1 Toril AalbergÕs book links a wide array of issues and perspectives that con- ventionally are kept apart. She combines normative theory with empirical justice research, takes a longitudinal as well as a cross-national perspective, and she discusses her results against the background of the socio-structural and institutional context. The book provides a detailed picture of the attitudinal landscape and is a rich source of comparative data on social justice attitudes. The exceptionally wide variety of approaches that are used represents an asset of this analysis and addresses the need for an encompassing view on the issue of justice. At the same time, when recapitulating the results, it becomes evident that this strategy also entails dangers: AalbergÕs approach requires a more comprehensive conceptual framework that allows a coherent interpretation of her findings. It is argued that normative institutionalism would offer a suitable frame of interpretation for the subject and design employed. KEY WORDS: public opinion research; empirical justice research; normative theories of justice; comparative welfare state research. Why should you read a book about comparative public opinion on justice? While philosophers have been arguing about the meaning of justice for centuries, public opinion research investigates what ‘‘the people think.’’ 1 Graduate School of Social Sciences, University of Bremen/GSSS, FVG-West, Wiener Strasse/ Ecke Celsiusstrasse, Postfach 330 440, D-28334 Bremen, Germany. 2 Address correspondence to: Steffen Mau, Graduate School of Social Sciences, University of Bremen/GSSS, FVG-West, Wiener Strasse/Ecke Celsiusstrasse, Postfach 330 440, D-28334 Bremen, Germany; e-mail: smau@gsss.uni-bremen.de Social Justice Research, Vol. 19, No. 3, September 2006 (Ó 2006) DOI: 10.1007/s11211-006-0013-9 379 0885-7466/06/0900-0379/0 Ó 2006 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc.