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Editorial
We
are most grateful to the Political Quarterly for permission
to reprint 'The Many Faces of Universal Basic Income', by
Jürgen de Wispelaere and Lindsay Stirton. This substantial
article offers us "a better appreciation of the wealth
of proposals falling under the rubric of universal basic
income, and the potential diversity of arrangements that
exist at the level of concrete design and implementation."
It
raises a question about that rubric, debated before in this
newsletter and also on our website: the question of terminology.
Since the first Basic Income European Network congress in
1986 the terms 'Basic Income' and 'Citizen's Income' have
referred to an unconditional payment to every individual
as a right of citizenship, paid automatically, and nonwithdrawable.
The article employs the term 'Basic Income' to denote a
family of schemes, the schemes characterised by a diversity
of conditionalities, withdrawabilities and coverage. The
question is: Should 'Basic Income' and 'Citizen's Income'
be used to denote only schemes in which nonwithdrawable
payments are made to every individual unconditionally, or
should the meaning of the terms be stretched to cover other
income maintenance programmes sharing one or more of the
characteristics of a Citizen's Income ?
Readers'
comments are always welcome.
Article
The
many faces of Universal Basic Income
by
Jürgen de Wispelaere and Lindsay Stirton
During
the past decades the debate on the desirability and feasibility
of universal basic income has reached maturity. Associated
with a growing number of scholars, social activists, public
advocacy groups and political parties, basic income is no
longer perceived as yet another crackpot idea of the radical
left. Indeed, it is increasingly accepted that basic income
advocates have something valuable to contribute to the debate
on welfare reform and employment regulation. But with maturity
comes the need to rethink the ideal of a universal basic
income. As the debate expands, the standard definition of
basic income as an income granted by right to each individual,
without means test or work requirement, may no longer capture
the diversity of policies advanced within the basic income
community and beyond.
This
article contributes a first step to this enterprise by charting
the many faces of universal basic income. Our starting point
is the belief that successfully implementing a universal
basic income crucially depends on our being able to match
the design features of a particular scheme with the surrounding
policy context or administrative environment, which differs
extensively from one country to another. This, in turn,
requires a better appreciation of the wealth of proposals
falling under the rubric of universal basic income, and
the potential diversity of arrangements that exist at the
level of concrete design and implementation. It is towards
this latter task that this article is specifically directed.
The
devil in the detail
For
many scholars and practitioners, basic income constitutes
a distinctive social paradigm within contemporary welfare
theory, leading to vigorous normative arguments and ideological
disputes between its proponents and adversaries. This is
not to say that there is no substantial disagreement pertaining
to form or content of the normative principles underlying
universalism amongst its principal advocates. Neither does
it imply that we must buy into ideological cleavages to
find arguments for or against basic income. In fact, one
of the intriguing aspects of basic income is precisely its
capacity to secure support across the ideological spectrum.1
Moving
from social philosophy to policy it becomes apparent that
the paradigm of universalism does not constitute a single
identifiable policy, but represents a myriad of social support
schemes that differ substantially along a range of policy
dimensions. Basic income supporters readily acknowledge
that there exists ample choice of which policy to pursue
within a broadly universalist approach. Consequently, the
debate has now moved from defending universalism writ large
to a dispute within the basic income community itself over
the preferred form of basic income. The result is substantial
disagreement at the level of ideal-type policies: some scholars
favour a negative income tax scheme, others advocate an
unconditional basic income or a participation income, and
still others believe stakeholder or basic capital grants
are superior, and so on.2
Furthermore,
at the level of fine-grained design and implementation,
apparently similar proposals are even further differentiated
along dimensions that are characteristically not captured
in ideal-type analysis. An additional concern is that universal
schemes that are substantially similar in design may still
end up producing widely divergent outcomes because of different
interaction effects with policies already in place. It is
a mistake to assume that a universal basic income would
operate in something resembling an institutional vacuum.
To the extent that fine-tuned distinctions also produce
distinctive outcomes, both normative and empirically driven
research ought to take differential design features seriously.
In the next section we discern seven principal dimensions
along which concrete basic income proposals can be differentiated.
Dimensions
of basic income
Universality
Universality
refers to the extent of the population that is covered by
a given policy. Typically, universal policies are open to
all, while more selective measures single out a subset of
the population as beneficiaries. One category of subjects
often excluded from even the most universal schemes is non-citizens
(however defined), while more selective measures discriminate
even further to select eligible individuals or groups from
the broader population. Selectiveness immediately invokes
debate regarding the principles and mechanisms employed
to decide on eligibility. In practice this implies building
in some level of conditionality, discussed further below.
The
distinction between universal and selective measures, however,
is often overstated on ideological grounds. To begin with,
the label 'universalist' is misleading in cases where policies
are universal in some respects but selective in others.
Most policies in contemporary welfare regimes appear to
fit this mixed-bag category. In addition, a strict divide
between universal and selective measures is easily blurred
in practice. Circumstances typically introduce selective
effects in an otherwise universal policy; conversely, selective
measures may well combine to mimic the effects of a universal
policy.
Basic
income advocates often favour an incremental approach to
instituting a full basic income. One way in which this could
be done is to have basic income type policies in a specific
domain-child benefit, basic pension or sabbatical accounts-which
are then gradually expanded or 'universalised' over time.3
Here too we must be wary about attaching too much importance
to the label and ignoring what happens on the ground. In
what follows we review various ways in which universal basic
income schemes can be more or less universal, as well as
other salient dimensions in which concrete proposals can
be differentiated.
Individuality
Individuality
refers to the standard unit at which a policy is directed.
Welfare policy schemes basically face a choice of administering
their services either directly to individuals or indirectly
through a household unit. Basic income is routinely advocated
as a form of income support that caters to individuals.
However, some advocates, mainly for reasons of goodness-of-fit
with traditional approaches in welfare policy, have been
willing to compromise on this and recommend instituting
a basic income targeted to households. The dimension of
individuality therefore does not lose its relevance for
policy purposes.
In
the case of households many questions arise with respect
to the appropriate definition of a household and its internal
composition. Tony Atkinson distinguishes four types of household
units, each with its own delineation and composition problems:
'households' based on common residence; 'spending units'
based on common spending patterns; 'family units' defined
by blood ties or marriage; and finally the 'inner family'
defined in terms of a sustained dependence relationship.
Switching
from one household base to another in policy design has
been shown to imply up to a quarter of reductions in the
measurement of people on low income.4 Measuring the actual
effects of welfare policies is clearly sensitive to choice
of household type. Similar observations can be made regarding
the administrative challenges associated with targeting
policies to households. These reasons often lead policy-makers
to favour a more individualised approach.
From
a normative point of view, the chief sources of concern
are the often arbitrary discrimination of life-style choices
associated with household-based policies; unacceptable inequalities
between single-income and double-income households and between
single persons and double-income households (sometimes leading
to perverse redistributive effects from the poor to the
well-off); and the fact that non-individualised rights often
generate employment traps or trap partners into a dependency
relation.5 While conservative political factions are often
keen to use welfare policies to strengthen the traditional
nuclear family unit, the increasing variation of living
arrangements within and across generations suggests this
argument may have outlived its usefulness. Although much
attention has recently been devoted to the effects of individualising
benefits on intra-householder power relations, the research
remains surprisingly ambivalent about its implications for
basic income.6
Conditionality
Conditionality
implies the extent of conditions built into a policy that
may restrict a person's eligibility for a service. Most
welfare policies come with different types of conditions
attached that recipients need to satisfy to gain or maintain
eligibility. Basic income is of course distinctive precisely
in that it is purportedly unconditional or, failing that,
at the very least only employs conditions that do not violate
the programme's inclusiveness. An example of a conditionality
requirement that ostensibly does not affect inclusiveness
is Tony Atkinson's well-known proposal for a participation
income.7
To
understand better the dimension of conditionality a number
of distinctions need to be kept in mind. Conditionality
refers in the first instance to formal criteria of eligibility
that either imply a set of characteristics necessary to
acquire eligibility status or, alternatively, impose certain
behavioural constraints to retain eligibility (ex ante and
ex post conditionality, respectively). In addition to these
two main types we can discern hidden or implied forms of
conditionality: a universal basic income can become more
conditional because of the interplay with external contingencies,
which may result in the policy effectively treating recipients
differently within a formally uniform framework. Suppose
we institute a fully unconditional basic income at a variable
level related to a macroeconomic performance indicator such
as GDP or employment rates. The level of the grant decreases
when more people opt out of formal employment or if productivity
decreases below a certain threshold indicator, which serves
as a 'soft incentive' to push people back into work. While
such a scheme does not have any formal conditions attached
to it, it nevertheless institutes a set of incentives to
contribute towards maintaining a certain level of production
or employment.
Next,
conditions can be strict or weak depending on whether they
are 'set in stone' or there is a significant measure of
bureaucratic discretion in assessing when a claimant has
satisfied a requirement. Bureaucratic discretion invites
a measure of arbitrariness, and may induce welfare administrators
to engage in behaviour that violates professional standards.
Interestingly, welfare workers often oppose discretion and
prefer a system that rigorously outlines their duties precisely
because they want to minimise the risk of unprofessional
conduct.8 In addition, bureaucratic discretion may boost
administrative error, particularly when rules change rapidly
and become increasingly complex.9 At the same time, basic
income research should be aware of the literature in public
administration and administrative law that points to the
limits of administration 'by rule and rote' and of the appropriate
uses of discretion.
Finally,
conditions can also be narrow or broad depending on whether
they result in more or less exclusive policies-that is,
policies that capture a larger subset of the population.
The Earned Income Tax Credit, for instance, only applies
to those in work, whereas a participation income is meant
to encompass a broader range of activities, and hence a
broader range of target beneficiaries. This of course raises
the precarious problem of who ends up making the decision
to value certain social activities by including them in
the participation requirement. This is not a moot point:
conditions are often introduced within a universal basic
income for political reasons, because decision makers believe
there will not be sufficient political support for unconditional
measures-although occasionally economic grounds are also
put forward as arguments in favour of some conditionality.
On the other hand, increased target efficiency associated
with improved take-up rates is often cited as the strength
of unconditional measures. In practice, the choice of a
basic income scheme and its level of conditionality will
depend in large part on which constraint we believe to be
the stronger.
Uniformity
Uniformity
is the extent to which all those who are eligible receive
a similar level of benefit. Universal basic income schemes
can deviate from this strict interpretation in at least
two ways. First, we may decide to allocate different levels
of transfer to different types of recipients, thus imposing
a form of ex ante conditionality within the scheme. A familiar
example is the use of age to differentiate the allocation
of grants to children, adults of working age and pensioners.
By making good strategic use of a distinction that is already
embedded in existing welfare systems, basic income proponents
have a better chance of bringing basic income in via the
back door. Even noted opponents of unconditional basic income,
such as Gøsta Esping-Andersen, favour universal child
benefits and basic pensions, effectively endorsing a basic
income ideal for a subset of the population. Differentiating
uniformity provides a handy tool for policy design and advocacy.
Contingencies
also affect the uniformity of basic income. Imagine, for
instance, a universal scheme that is formally uniform but
with the value to its recipients fluctuating in line with
a set of external circumstances, such as the regional variation
in cost of living. It is a matter of some discussion whether
a basic income should remain uniform, as argued by Philippe
Van Parijs, or instead regional price differences should
provide a legitimate departure from the uniformity rule.10
Of course, policy-makers may well decide to use the differential
value of the grant to actively influence certain behavioural
traits: like taxes, grants may end up serving multiple purposes
that need to be balanced. In principle, then, both uniformity
and differentiation are consistent with most forms of basic
income. Of course, one should keep in mind that at the margin
a heavily differentiated scheme may no longer satisfy the
key requirement of universality, blurring the line between
'differentiation' and 'selectivity'.
Frequency/Duration
Until
recently, the dimensions of frequency and duration were
somewhat neglected within universal basic income schemes.
But at the end of the 1990s, a real cleavage emerged between
universal basic income proposals that provide a regular
income stream, as in unconditional basic income or participation
income, and schemes where beneficiaries receive a one-off
payment, constituting a capital stock as in stakeholder
or capital grant proposals.11 With respect to income streams,
a further relevant distinction should be made with respect
to the timing of regular instalments. It does make a difference
whether a recipient receives the grant on a weekly, monthly
or even yearly basis. Shorter intervals often draw support
from those who emphasise basic security, whereas advocates
of equal opportunity, suspicious of any form of paternalism,
typically favour longer intervals. Of course, timing may
simply be determined by the surrounding ad-ministrative
time frame: until recently, wages were commonly paid in
weekly instalments in the UK and Ireland as compared to
the majority of European countries which employed a monthly
pay system. Having basic income 'piggy-back' on whatever
system is in operation at any given time often makes good
administrative sense.
While
the distinction between streams and stocks informs much
of the current debate, the distinction is prone to overstatement.
Under the right circumstances income streams can be converted
into stocks and vice versa, though it remains unclear whether
such condit-ions are currently present in even the most
advanced welfare regimes. In addition, many of the basic
capital approaches seem to have some in-built mechanisms
of ensuring that the entire grant is not wasted on so-called
'stakeblowing' activities. Once we take this expansion into
account, the distinction between income and capital grant
schemes diminishes.12
A
final consideration concerns the duration aspect of basic
income. Putting a time-limit upon receipt of assistance
is a measure common to most selective income support policies,
but could conceivably be used to render universal basic
income socially and politically acceptable. A recent proposal
by Stuart White argues in favour of introducing a temporary
basic income scheme to combat exploitation and free-riding.13
Limiting the receipt of basic income to, say, a total of
five years may deflect free-riding by recipients who would
otherwise take advantage of the scheme, or at the very least
render its overall effect less socially damaging. In addition
to these normative considerations, a time-limited basic
income policy may also reflect practical considerations,
such as fitting neatly with other policies that make up
the institutional background of that particular welfare
regime (such as child benefit or universal pension provisions).
Modality
Modality
refers to the particular shape that a universal transfer
takes. When debating basic income we commonly think about
cash transfers, but certain forms of in-kind transfers (for
example, food coupons, education or travel vouchers, housing
benefits) should not be dismissed out of hand. The defining
feature of a universal basic income scheme is not the distinction
between cash or in-kind transfers as such, but rather whether
social assistance takes the form of public or private goods.
Universally distributed private in-kind measures such as
education vouchers may be con-sidered part of a universal
basic income, as opposed to strict public goods such as
road infrastructure. Having said this, there are many good
reasons why most universal basic income schemes will rely
on cash transfers, but in principle at least part of a basic
income or capital grant could be transferred in kind.
Few
researchers seem to appreciate fully how many distinctive
forms cash transfers can take. Consider, for instance, the
difference between schemes that deliver the grant by postal
cheque, in the form of a debit card with automatic top-up,
or as a refundable tax credit. Each of these forms has benefits
and drawbacks that need to be carefully considered at the
level of design and implementation. One important administrative
factor is the level of integration, the ease with which
a given scheme operates within the existing administrat-ive
environment. Highly integrated grants make use of existing
tax-and-transfer mechanisms only, whereas weakly integrated
versions may require additional, often costly, administrative
measures. The latter must of course be offset by the corresponding
advantages: for example, higher levels of take-up of schemes
that oper-ate independently of other, more selective, welfare
benefits.
Adequacy
A
final dimension of universal basic income schemes relates
to the capacity to satisfy recipients' basic needs. Strictly
speaking, a universal basic income need not be fixed at
subsistence level: it can conceivably both exceed as well
as fall short of what is commonly considered adequate in
a given society.14
Some
scholars have made the case for a partial as opposed to
a full basic income, and most cognate universal schemes
can be varied along this dimension. The key distinction
here is between partial proposals that allow for basic income
to be complemented by other types of cash or in-kind assistance,
and proposals where the partial basic income becomes the
sole means of social assistance. Not surprisingly, ideological
positions differ considerably as to which form is most desirable.
Neo-conservatives like James Buchanan, Milton Friedman or
Charles Murray have all at times endorsed a welfare state
that adopts a single universal scheme for social assistance,
provided we simultane-ously cut all other types of state
intervention. Socialists and social democrats, on the other
hand, oppose such proposals and insist that a partial basic
income should always be complemented by other forms of social
assistance. With respect to one-off grants, things are slightly
different: in this case the goal is not primarily income
security but rather improving one's stock of personal assets.
Typical examples of how to use a basic capital include investing
in education or using the grant as start-up capital for
a small business.15
Focusing for the moment on income stream versions of universal
basic income, the adequacy dimension raises a number of
problems. There is first the familiar problem of defining
and measuring the level of subsistence at any given time
or place. There exists an immense literature on various
ways of delineating basic needs in contemporary welfare
societies. While most of this literature accepts that there
is something arbitrary about determining a uniform level
of subsistence across society, we should nevertheless appreciate
that even arbitrary benchmarks often serve a useful purpose
in social policy. This is not merely a matter of debating
the proper criteria but also of finding ways to properly
assess how differential contingencies affect people's lives.
A
related concern is whether the level of a universal grant
needs to be fixed at all. Perhaps we should take a dynamic
approach by making the level of the grant periodically revisable,
which could be done in two ways. First, the level of the
grant can be periodically revised by Parliament or an independent
commission, taking into account reflections of economic
perform-ance, political will and so on. A second possibility
is to link the level of the grant automatically to some
macro-economic indicators, as is already the case in some
European countries. This indexation approach has the clear
advantage of minimising direct political interference, but
it remains a question whether this is in all cases a good
thing. Two further advantages of the dynamic approach, whichever
form it takes, are that the resulting level of grant reflects
the overall state of the economy as well as being able to
respond much quicker to dynamic changes in behaviour that
will inevitably occur with the introduction of a basic income.
A potential downside of such a dynamic approach, however,
is perhaps that it does not instil the same degree of basic
security as a fixed level grant achieves, which in turn
may have adverse effects at the personal as well as the
social level.
From
'adversarial' to 'fuzzy' policy design
The
history of basic income is replete with deep-seated divisions
between advocates and adversaries. Today, both camps still
regard basic income broadly as a radical departure from
welfare policy rooted in the Bismarckian or Beveridgean
traditions. However, as mentioned before, this adversarial
approach to policy design is increasingly inadequate because
welfare policy defies simple normative and ideological opposition.
The point applies to almost any kind of policy, but universal
basic income is a case in point.
Basic
income may end up serving a number of goals, not all of
which are compatible or even desirable. More significantly,
what Brian Barry has labelled the principled argument for
basic income can only justify its broad contours, leaving
detailed features, such as those discussed, undecided.16
This raises a serious political problem for basic income
advocates, who remain unsure which political forces to court.
Each political faction on the ideological spectrum seems
divided as to whether they should fully endorse basic income
and, even in cases where they do, which partic-ular variant
to sponsor. And even if all of this could be resolved, as
we argued, practicalities associated with the implementation
of basic income repeatedly interfere with neatly drawn theoretical
categories, rendering a principled, adversarial approach
fruitless. Taking a less antagonistic approach, we propose
that the mature stage of basic income debate would be more
suited to the sort of 'fuzzy' policy design that features
prominently in recent policy discourse.17
This
has a number of potential advantages. First, it takes seriously
the idea that policies do not simply follow from a prescriptive
statement of desirable goals. It is often suggested that
policy design has to contend with second-best solutions
because of economic, political or administrative feasibility
constraints. But this assumes that a preferred policy can
be determined independently from these background constraints,
which in our view does not make much sense. Because policy
must necessarily fit a number of contingencies, it is inherently
pragmatic and compromising in nature (even if one agrees
that any policy must start from a normative argument about
desirable social goals). Fuzzy design clearly welcomes the
idea of basic income as a family of concrete proposals,
which can be better fitted to the background circumstances
at hand.
Following
from this, we recommend that basic income design take a
bottom-up approach where circumstances dictate both constraints
and opportunities, and good policy requires that policy-makers
experiment with different ways of solving practical problems
and achieving certain goals. The idea of basic income having
many faces sits well with the rejection of 'one size fits
all' approaches in public policy analysis. From a fuzzy
perspective it is perfectly congruent to advoc-ate basic
income in principle, while recognising that the detailed
outlook of any actual proposal will be largely determined
by the specific constellation of goals, constraints and
opportunities. One interesting implication in the context
of an emerging social Europe is that different states or
welfare regimes do not need to endorse precisely the same
policy in order to deliver universal welfare. Recent years
have witnessed a massive literature on the difficulties
of obtaining positive coordination on social measures across
EU member states.18 The variety within the basic income
ideal should be appreciated as one of its key advantages,
allowing it to match a wide range of political limitations.
Relinquishing
antagonism to 'fuzzy congruence', then, has important implications
for the comparative analysis of universal welfare policies.
Acknowledging the many faces of basic income allows for
a specific comparative approach to basic income research
which need not focus on programme specifics, but instead
allows for evaluating policy outcomes. To policy-makers
it matters less whether a basic income is fully unconditional
or incorporates a weak participation requirement, as long
as both score roughly equally well on desirable goals such
as combating poverty, increasing equal access to employment,
supporting a variety of life-styles, etc. And even where
programmes score unevenly, a comparative approach might
provide good indications why this is either not desirable-maybe
different countries rate competing social goals differently-or
perhaps not feasible. After all, different economic, political
or administrative background conditions entail different
possibilities for policy implementation.
Summary
The
main lesson of this article can be summarized as follows:
there is no such thing as a preferred basic income scheme
independent of the overall institutional and policy context.
The debate concerning the best possible basic income design
can only generate productive results when carried out within
the rich institutional environment of case studies. It is
part of the policy-making balancing act that what works
here may not work over there, and what seems a good idea
now might become counterproductive or obsolete at a later
time. This insight should not lead to despair; instead,
the crafty policy designer should wholeheartedly embrace
it. 'Fuzzy' policy design paints a world in which policy
reform explicitly acknowledges the many faces of basic income,
and uses this feature as its main strength to further the
cause of social justice across Europe and beyond.
Acknowledgements
This
article is part of a wider project on the administration
of universal grants. We are grateful to John Cameron, Norma
Henderson, Malcolm Torry and particularly José Noguera
for comments on a previous draft.
The Citizen's Income Trust is grateful to the Political
Quarterly for permission to reprint this article. It originally
appeared in The Political Quarterly, vol.75, no.3, July-September
2004, pp.266-274. The Political Quarterly is published by
Blackwell, and further details can be found on www.blackwellpublishing.com/journals/poqu.
Notes
1
Philippe Van Parijs, 'Competing justifications of basic
income', in Arguing for Basic Income, London/New York, Verso,
1992. Brian Barry has suggested the capacity to transcend
ideological cleavages is a particular strength of basic
income, but unfortunately so far it has not generated sufficient
critical mass to influence agenda-setting or coalition-building
strategies in advanced industrial countries. See Barry,
'Surfer's saviours?', Citizen's Income Bulletin, no. 22,
1996, pp. 2-4.
2
Keith Dowding, Jurgen De Wispelaere and Stuart White (eds),
The Ethics of Stakeholding, Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2003.
3
Philippe Van Parijs, 'Reply', in Philippe Van Parijs, Joshua
Cohen and Joel Rogers, What's Wrong with a Free Lunch?,
Boston, Beacon Press, 2001, pp. 124-7.
4
Anthony Atkinson, Poverty in Europe, Oxford, Blackwell,
1998, pp. 34-5.
5
Maria Jepsen and Danielle Meulders, 'The individualization
of rights in social protection systems', in Hedva Sarfati
and Giuliano Bonoli (eds), Labour Market and Social Protection
Reforms in International Perspective, Aldershot, Ashgate,
2002, pp. 108-10.
6
Compare, for instance, Tony Fitzpatrick, 'Feminism and basic
income', in Freedom and Security, Basingstoke, Macmillan,
1999; Ingrid Robyens, 'Hush money or emancipation fee? A
gender analysis of basic income', in Robert van der Veen
and Loek Groot (eds), Basic Income on the Agenda, Amsterdam,
University of Amsterdam Press, 2000; Alisa McKay and Jo
Van Every, 'Gender, family, and income maintenance. A feminist
case for citizens' basic income', Social Politics, vol.
7, 2000, pp. 266-84; Anne Allstott, 'Good for women', in
What's Wrong with a Free Lunch?
7
Anthony Atkinson, 'The Case for a Participation Income',
The Political Quarterly, vol. 67, no. 1, 1996, pp. 67-70.
8
See Mary Jo Bane and David Ellwood, Welfare Realities: From
Rhetoric to Reform, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University
Press, 1994.
9
Atkinson, Poverty in Europe, pp. 131-3, discusses errors
in administration due to imperfect information. For a sustained
discussion of formal and informal discretion in the welfare
state see Robert Goodin, Reasons for Welfare: The Political
Theory of the Welfare State, Princeton, Princeton University
Press, 1988; for a socio-legal view of discretion in welfare
administration see Jerry Mashaw, Bureaucratic Discretion,
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1983, and, more generally,
Keith Hawkins (ed), The Uses of Discretion, Oxford, Clarendon
Press, 1992.
10
The implications of regional differences in purchasing power
are in fact barely discussed with respect to universal basic
income; but see Philippe Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All,
Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995, pp. 37-8 and 244, note 8.
11
For a comparative analysis of income and capital approaches
see Keith Dowding, Jurgen De Wispelaere and Stuart White,
The Ethics of Stakeholding, as well as a recent issue of
Politics and Society, vol. 32, no.1, 2004. Although in some
proposals the actual delivery of a one-off payment will
still occur in a few large instalments, this remains substantially
different from a life-long regular income stream.
12
See in particular Robert van der Veen, 'Assessing the unconditional
stake', in The Ethics of Stakeholding.
13
Stuart White, 'Fair reciprocity and basic income', in Andrew
Williams and Andrew Reeves, Real Libertarianism Assessed,
Basingstoke, Macmillan, 2003; 'Freedom, reciprocity, and
time-limited citizens' income', in The Ethics of Stakeholding.
White's proposal is very similar to the sabbatical grant
idea proposed by Claus Offe.
14
See Van Parijs, Real Freedom for All, pp. 30-57, for a discussion
of 'the highest sustainable basic income'. Theodore Marmor
rightly distinguishes between 'aggregate' and 'individual'
standards of adequacy. See Marmor, 'On comparing income
maintenance alternatives', American Political Science Review,
vol. 65, 1971, pp. 86-7.
15
Bruce Ackerman and Anne Alstott, The Stakeholder Society,
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1999; Julian LeGrand and
David Nissan, 'A capital idea: helping the young to help
themselves', in The Ethics of Stakeholding.
16
Brian Barry, 'Real freedom and basic income', Journal of
Political Philosophy, vol. 5, 1997, pp. 274-86.
17
B. Guy Peters, 'Policy reform: is uniformity the answer?',
The Political Quarterly, vol. 74, no. 4, 2003, pp. 421-8.
18
Fritz Scharpf, Governing in Europe, Oxford, Oxford University
Press, 1999.
Reviews
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This
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has been clear to anyone interested in either area that
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on the labour market, yet a systematic and detailed analysis
of such interactions has been largely missing. Similarly,
labour economists in particular have known for quite a while
that one of the crucial elements affecting how individuals
behave, in terms of job-seeking, expending work effort and
so on, is precisely the background of social security
arrangements on which they can draw (or not) if they ever
need to. But labour economists too by and large only have
a crude understanding of security systems and seem only
interested in how benefits affect the reservation wage or
the supply of labour etc. Policy advances in both areas,
in particular the focus on activating welfare as well as
the appreciation of how 'permanent austerity' (Pierson)
affects policy choice, now demand that we integrate insights
where possible.
The
present collection explicitly aims to contribute to this
enterprise, charting significant evolutions in the labour
market as well as social protection systems. The book takes
a comparative approach, looking at a wide variety of countries
and welfare/employment regimes as well as covering an extensive
set of issues. The inevitable consequence is that the book
turns out to be a bit all over the place. Also, as is often
the case in such volumes, the emphasis is on describing
current systems in place and how they evolved using country-by-country
case studies.
The
overall result is that many interesting insights are buried
within material that yet again describes a particular country's
evolved labour market and social security arrangements.
Granted, comparative researchers may disagree but to this
reader at least a bit more analytical rigour would have
benefited the collection. Nevertheless the volume includes
a number of papers that will be of great interest to basic
income supporters.
Maria
Jepsen and Daniele Meulders's chapter 'The Individualization
of Rights in Social Protection Systems' discusses the problematic
status of one of the cornerstones of the early Welfare State:
derived rights to assistance for spouses and children. Recent
events have seriously impacted upon the capacity of such
derived rights to generate adequate protection, and Jepsen
and Meulders point out some of the key issues and investigate
some ways in which countries have moved towards increased
individualization of protection rights. The individualization
of assistance is of course one of the core arguments in
the basic income debate.
Somewhat
related is Robert Salais's piece on 'Security in a Flexible
Economy'. Salais suggests we now have entered a third age
of social protection, characterized by a concern with choice
and quality in employment as opposed to merely minimum subsistence
and adequate employment levels. Of course the third age
also requires a rejuvenated policy agenda which, according
to Salais, should move towards broader strategies of inclusion
and social participation. Such an agenda is hardly alien
to the community of basic income supporters, many of whom
have adopted a post-industrialist or social inclusion stance
in defence of their preferred policy.
Jane
Millar neatly reviews New Labour's welfare-to-work policy:
her article serves as a reminder of the Labour Government's
goals as well as some critical notes on why it hasn't delivered
on its promises despite Government protestations to the
contrary. Chief amongst these is a fundamental confusion
in New Labour's various New Deals - to wit, that it rather
indiscriminately targets everyone without a job instead
of those who are really unemployed. This is not a matter
of semantics as anyone who is disabled or suffers from long-term
illness can testify. Here again, basic income supporters
will find much of use.
Finally,
the only paper that explicitly mentions basic income is
by Jean-Michel Belorgey. In a comprehensive review of the
French experience, Bergoley charts the ways in which labour
market evolutions have threatened social security. In the
absence of a state guarantee to provide all (able-bodied)
workers with a job, the state has a duty to provide income
security instead. The question remains what form such a
system should take. Belorgey first pays homage to basic
income's innovative approach, only to dismiss it out of
hand later on for not making economic sense and remaining
ambiguous. Unfortunately the author spends too little time
detailing his criticisms, so there is not much to be said
in response. It seems to me, however, that Belorgey's appreciation
of basic income, and in particular the way in which different
proposals that fall under this label operate, is quite different
from that of most basic income supporters. In short, Sarfati
and Bonoli have delivered a volume which offers many interesting
thoughts on the important relation between labour market
regulation and social security, but it seems readers will
have to surf through quite a bit of material before actually
coming across something that captures the mind. And it is
still a bit of a shame that basic income has not managed
to impact more on a volume that deals directly with issues
at its very heart.
Jurgen
De Wispelaere
Michael
Otsuka, Libertarianism without inequality,
Oxford University Press, 2003, 158 pages, hb, 0 19 924395
6, £25. Order
this book
According
to the dust jacket, "Michael Otsuka sets out to vindicate
left-libertarianism, a political philosophy which combines
stringent rights of control over one's own mind, body, and
life with egalitarian rights of ownership of the world."
In so doing, he creates a political philosophy more true
to the ideal of self-ownership than libertarian philosophers
such as Robert Nozick, and more true to the idea of society
as a voluntary association than liberal egalitarian philosophers
such as John Rawls. Otsuka reconsiders self-ownership and
the "Lockean proviso" on which much of Nozick's
argument against the redistribution of property rests. He
presents his work as a revision of Locke, but one that is
true to the voluntary spirit of Locke's treatise.
Otsuka
defines "robust self-ownership" as "in addition
to having the libertarian right itself, one also has rights
over enough worldly resources to ensure that one will not
be forced by necessity to come to the assistance of others
in a manner involving the sacrifice of one's life, limb,
or labour". Nozick does not consider robust self-ownership
and seems willing to sacrifice it to preserve nominal self-ownership
and unrestricted rights of property ownership. He, therefore,
ends up with a world in which people are much less free
than Otsuka's society.
Locke, like many other philosophers, begins with the recognition
that all people have equal claim to the land and resources
of the world, and argues that individuals can appropriate
portions of it as long as they leave "enough and as
good" for everyone else. If one interprets this to
mean that others are no worse off than they would be in
a primitive state of nature, the proviso allows great inequalities
to result from the appropriation of land. But Otsuka defines
an "egalitarian proviso" to mean that one can
only appropriate resources if they leave others with the
ability to acquire an equally advantageous share. Such a
rule might allow inequalities, but none that follow from
control of resources outside of one's own mind and body.
By
basing his theory of government on the principles of robust
libertarian self-ownership and the egalitarian Lockean proviso,
Otsuka seeks to create a society in which all people give
their actual consent to the political society in which they
live, not the weak tacit consent offered by Locke nor the
hypothetical consent offered by Rawls. Otsuka goes on to
apply his theory to issues such as the right to punish and
intergenerational equity. However, the distributive implications
of these two principles will be of most interest to readers
of the Citizen's Income Newsletter.
Otsuka
does not discuss what practical policy would be needed to
ensure that these two principles are upheld in a modern
society, and he does not discuss basic income at all. He
sticks instead to the hypothetical model of an agrarian
society in which these principles can be attained by granting
plots of land. However, a very good case for basic income
could be made using these two principles. The egalitarian
proviso justifies a large amount of redistribution from
the wealthy to the poor, and the principle of robust libertarian
self-ownership implies that redistribution should come in
the form of an unconditional grant large enough to cover
one's basic needs. What policy could do this other than
basic income?
Karl Widerquist
Peter
Dwyer, Understanding Social Citizenship, The
Policy Press, Bristol, 2004, pb, 1 86134 415 5, £17.99,
hb, 1 86134 416 3, £50. Also
in paper back £17.99 Order this book
Peter
Dwyer's book is essentially an introductory textbook on
the history of citizenship and the theoretical debates that
inform modern conceptions of citizenship. It is designed
for students on social policy, sociology, social work and
certain politics courses. At times it might be a little
dry for the 'general reader' but it is informative for those
interested in the history of citizenship and how this affects
attitudes towards social policy. Nested within the chapters
are boxes containing bullet points or summaries of the main
arguments and points. These will be useful for students
and those 'cramming' on the subject.
The
book is divided into three sections, Part One dealing with
Citizenship and Welfare, Part Two with 'Issues of Difference'
- meaning how one designs social policies for those facing
different kinds of problems; and Part Three looking to citizenship
beyond the nation state and towards the European Union and
beyond.
The
main themes of Part One include the needs of citizenship
seen largely as a collective coalition of contractually
obliged individuals who can work together to fulfil each
other's needs. Welfare issues are discussed in traditional
categories such as 'equality', 'need', 'desert', and the
issues of universality and conditionality contrasted. Chapter
Two examines the major traditions of citizenship, liberalism
and the renewed contender 'civic republicanism', which seems
to include communitarianism here. Chapter Three is addressed
to a British audience and discusses the thinking of T.H.
Marshall. The final chapter of Part One discusses Marxist
challenges, the new right, and the communitarianism of Etzioni.
A final brief discussion considers the policies of 'new
labour', though says so little that it hardly seems worth
the while.
Part
Two tackles poverty, what gender issues throw up for citizenship
rights and welfare, and the problems of disabilities, and
race or ethnicity. For some reason some people imagine that
these 'issues of difference' cause problems for universal
benefit schemes, which simply seems a misunderstanding of
the terms of the debate, but Dwyer discusses these issues
in a generally sensible and sensitive manner.
The final part looks towards the possibility of a social
Europe where citizenship and social security schemes might
converge. Whilst a theoretical possibility, convergence
is only likely to be towards the lowest common denominator
since too much that is different is already invested in
the diverse systems, unless, that is, a radical alternative
- such as a Basic or Citizen's Income - can be instituted
throughout Europe. The final chapter considers globalization.
This
is an excellent student textbook for specialist courses
on citizenship and social welfare. It covers a lot of historical
material in a competent and thorough manner. I would have
liked the author's voice to shine through more, however,
and there could have been more extensive discussion of the
possible radical alternatives to the traditional accounts
covered here.
Keith
Dowding, London School of Economics and Political Science
Richard
Berthoud and Maria Iacovou (eds), Social Europe: Living
standards and welfare states,
Edward Elgar, 2004, 296 pp, hardback, 1 84376 676 0, £59.95.
Order
this book
This
book reviews the findings of a major research programme
on family, employment and income dynamics in Europe and
draws conclusions about life changes and welfare regimes.
Chapter
1 introduces Esping-Andersen's welfare regime typology
1.
"The 'social-democratic' regime type, with generous
levels of state support, with benefits based on individual
and universal entitlement, and an emphasis on support
from the state, rather than the family or the market.
This is typified by the Scandinavian countries.
2.
The 'liberal' regime type, with rather modest levels of
benefits and an emphasis on the market as the dominant
means of support. Benefits are heavily means-tested to
target those most in need. This regime type is prominent
in English-speaking countries, and is represented in Europe
by the UK and Ireland.
3.
The 'conservative' regime type, with an emphasis on the
central role of the family in support for individuals,
with a reduced role for the state, and a predominance
of insrance-based benefits. Esping-Andersen includes the
countries of continental Europe in this group: the Benelux
countries; France, Germany and Austria; plus the southern
peninsula countries of Spain, Portugal, Greece and Italy"
(p.15).
The
editors divide the third category into 'corporatist' (Benelux,
France, Germany and Austria) and 'residual' (Spain, Portugal,
Greece and Italy).
Chapter
2 charts the diversity of family patterns across Europe;
chapters 3 and 4 explore the relationshiop between family
life and employment at key stages of the life-cycle; chapter
5 examines the trend towards non-standard employment contracts,
chapter 6 mobility in and out of work, and chapter 7 the
impact of unemployment. Chapter 8 finds both similarities
and dissimilarities between different welfare regime types
in relation to overall distributional effects (p.197) and
to effects on income of particular life events, so "we
should be careful not to use the regime-type classification
without testing its relevance and appropriateness in light
of the issue under study" (p.199).
Chapter
9 studies the dynamics of income poverty and concludes that
"poverty is experienced by a far higher number of individuals
when viewed longitudinally rather than cross-sectionally,"
but that "if we extrapolate from the mean cross-sectional
poverty line to an expected experience of poverty on the
basis of independence between years in poverty, what we
actually see are far fewer people experiencing poverty and
a polarisation of persistent poverty. This is important
since it suggests an 'inertia' to the experience of poverty
that can 'trap' individuals and households, but the effect
varies between countries, with those from more social-democratic
and employment-centred regimes being less polarised and
closer to expectations based solely on probability theory"
(p.221). Thus liberal and residual regimes are shown to
increase the risk of persistent poverty (p.221).
Chapter
10 explores the complex relationship between household income
and the family's living standards and finds that persistent
poverty is a significant cause of social exclusion but that
in different countries different additional factors are
also important.
Chapter
11 concludes that comparative cross-national longitudinal
research is important.
We
can only agree - and suggest that with such a wealth of
data it might be possible to abandon the normal three- or
four-category characterisation of welfare regimes, and instead
rank individual regimes against a range of variables and
evaluate the data against each variable in turn. Of particular
interest would be the correlations which might result from
studying income mobility, stability, security and inequality
in relation to the level of universality in the benefits
structure of a welfare regime. The researchers would need
to develop a measure of the relative universality of a benefits
regime. Such a measure might lead to further interesting
correlations.
Virpi
Timonen, Restructuring the Welfare State: Globalization
and Social Policy Reform in Finland and Sweden,
Edward Elgar, Cheltenham, 2003, ix + 222pp, hb, 1 84376
124 6, £45. Order
this book
Timonen
shows how the choice of countries studied determines the
theory of welfare state transformation which emerges. All
European economies have experienced globalisation (involving
lower trade barriers, liberalised financial markets, global
competition, and downward pressure on tax rates), but their
welfare states have reacted in different ways. Finland and
Sweden have developed 'encompassing' or 'institutional'
welfare states, and these have adapted to globalisation
and economic crises by taking on 'liberal' (or residualist)
and 'conservative' (earnings-related insurance-based) characteristics
in order to retain their basically institutional character
- i.e., they have taken on characteristics long-established
in Anglo-Saxon welfare states (such as that in the UK) and
in Bismarckian systems (such as that in Germany) in order
to remain 'encompassing' structures. In particular, greater
reliance on means-tested benefits of last resort (which
characterise social security provision in the UK), higher
employees' (rather than employers') contributions, and greater
reliance on private insurance (which mirror recent changes
in the German and French insurance-based systems) have enabled
the basic structure of the Scandinavian welfare states (characterised
by universal pensions and by sickness and unemployment benefits
to which employers make considerable contributions) to survive.
The
detailed chapters on welfare state development and restructuring,
on globalization and other outside pressures which have
triggered welfare state restructuring, on political parties
and interest groups, on power resources at work, on restructuring
of public health and social services, and on the greater
reliance on means-tested benefits, lead to the conclusion
that particular stabilising forces (such as Trades Unions
and employers' organisations) and a structure which gave
to all Scandinavian population groups an incentive to contribute
to the system when it was built, have resulted in increased
public approval of the system during a recession, rather
than the kind of unwillingness to finance the welfare state
which the UK has experienced. As Timonen puts it, "in
a game of politics against markets, politics scored another
victory" (p.17).
Of
particular interest to those interested in social security
reform is chapter 7. During the recession of the 1990s pensions
ceased to be universal in Sweden and became earnings-related
and means-tested, and some other benefits became more tightly
work-related. As Timonen sees it, no particular organised
groups were defending universal benefits - but that doesn't
mean a permanent slide away from universal and towards means-tested
benefits, because the median voter is likely to favour universal
benefits. It is interesting that Sweden's child benefit
has remained universal, as has the UK's. As Timonen suggests,
"child benefits could have been taken away from high-earning
families, but this option was not seriously considered at
any time during the 1990s, partly because the resulting
reduction in expenditure would not have been significant
but more importantly because it would have undermined the
support and legitimacy of the system as a whole" (p.180).
This
book suggests that means-tested benefits will re-main important
but also that problems of means-testing are understood and
that there are parts of the benefits system where means-testing
doesn't belong - and this seems to be particularly true
of benefits for children.
The author suggests that we ought to expect that universal
benefits in general will be more popular and thus better-defended
than means-tested ones because everyone receives universal
benefits but not everyone receives means-tested benefits
- but this isn't what happens, except in relation to public
services which benefit or potentially benefit everybody
substantially (such as litter collection), because for increasing
numbers the value of universal benefits is negligible so
they wish to see as little of their taxes spent on benefits
as possible - hence the drive towards means-testing.
So
why has universal child benefit survived? If a benefit structure's
survival is merely the result of an emotional reflex, then
the future of universal benefits might look bleak - unless,
of course, organised interest groups argue for them.
Holly
Sutherland, Tom Sefton and David Piachaud, Poverty in
Britain: the impact of government policy since 1997,
Joseph Rowntree Foundation, 2003, pb 1 85935 151 4, 80 pp,
£14.95 Order
this book
The
report assesses the progress made in the reduction of poverty
during the six years since 1997 and asks whether the same
reduction would have occurred if the policy changes made
during those years had not been made. Using a definition
of poverty of 'income below 60% of the median income', the
authors model policy changes and conclude that if there
had been no changes to direct tax or benefits then poverty
would have been higher for children by 62% if income means
'income before housing costs' but only by 38% if income
means 'income after housing costs'. For pensions poverty
would have been higher by 53% based on income before housing
costs and by 129% based on income after housing costs. The
Government's tax and benefit policy changes are calculated
to have removed 1.3m children from poverty.
One
problem is that household expenditure data is only available
about two years after the event, and because a variety of
labour market, earned income, family com-position and other
factors can change considerably over six years, the actual
change in poverty levels cannot easily be estimated. The
researchers estimate that the actual number of children
taken out of poverty will be about 1m and that the Government
will therefore have met its target of reducing child poverty
by 25% by 2004.
Looking
to the future, the authors conclude that, if employment
levels are maintained, and if benefits and tax credits keep
up with median income, then poverty levels will not rise
- but the fact that Income Support rates remain well below
the Government's own definition of poverty will mean that
some sections of the population cannot be lifted out of
poverty.
A
problem with the Government's definition of poverty is that
if earned incomes rise then the median (and mean) income
rises and the poverty line rises, meaning that tax and benefit
changes are needed simply to stop poverty levels rising.
Thus "more redistribution will be needed each year
simply to maintain the progress which has been made."
This means that "further reductions in child poverty
are likely to be increasingly difficult to achieve"
(p.63).
During
the period under review, Tax Credits entered the landscape.
These have not only affected income calculations but will
also have had labour market behavioural effects which in
turn will have had an effect on incomes. If it proves possible
to use household expenditure data to isolate these effects
then it will be interesting to see how significant they
are. Equally interesting would be predictions of future
poverty levels based on further changes to the structure
of tax and benefits rather than simply on changes in rates
within the current system.
©
Citizen's Income Trust 2005
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