The Public Administration Case against Participation Income

Abstract

-Anthony Atkinson's proposal for a participation income (PI) has been acclaimed by social philosophers and policy experts as a workable compromise given the problems besetting an unconditional basic income (UBI). While some see PI as the first step towards a fully unconditional scheme, others regard PI as superior to UBI on ethical grounds as well as in terms of political feasibility. Both of these views disregard the administrative complications associated with introducing a broad participation requirement into welfare entitlements. In this paper we identify three essential administrative tasks that any welfare scheme must perform -establishing criteria of entitlement, determining compliance with those criteria, and allocating benefits to qualified beneficiaries -and show that PI performs poorly in terms of all three tasks. This suggests what we call the trilemma of participation income: only at significant costs to administrators and welfare clients does the scheme retain its apparent ability to satisfy the requirements of both activation and universal approaches to welfare. Consequently, the main apparent strength of PI -its capacity to unite different factions within the basic income debate -is shown to be illusory precisely because competing factions strongly prefer different resolutions of the trilemma. This, we argue, has far-reaching implications for the political strategy of basic income advocates as well as the wider debate on universal welfare reform.

The Struggle for Strategy: On the Politics of the Basic Income Proposal

“…Many BI advocates assume that, facing administrative complexity, policy makers will relax monitoring conditions surrounding the participation requirement such that over time a full BI comes into being. But an equally plausible scenario would be one in which participation requirements are restricted to those that fit existing bureaucratic capabilities, reducing the scope of the participation income to easily administered activities such as employment, full-time education or the formal care of a registered dependent (De Wispelaere and Stirton, 2007). Instead of regarding what happens after initial agreement behind the veil of vagueness as something akin to the inevitable unfolding of history, we should remain aware that the operational detail of the BI proposal necessarily entails political negotiations in which the deep and persistent tensions between the different factions will re-emerge with a vengeance.…”

¿Una idea cautivadoramente sencilla? Obstáculos prácticos en la aplicación de la renta básica universal

“…Pensemos por un momento, a modo de comparación, en la capacidad de supervisión de un programa de prestaciones sociales condicionadas (véase De Wispelaere y Stirton, 2007). En primer lugar, este tipo de estrategias, lejos de prescindir de la supervisión, se basan en una amplia intervención de los asistentes sociales.…”

“…El debate sobre la renta básica se ha concentrado, en gran medida, en la ética, la economía y, más recientemente, en la política de los regímenes que mantienen una renta universal de modo incondicional. En contraste, se han hecho pocos esfuerzos por considerar las cuestiones que atañen a la aplicación de ésta; una situación desafortunada que hemos puesto en cuestión anteriormente (De Wispelaere y Stirton, 2007, 2011a, 2011b). A nuestro entender, las razones por las cuales se haya omitido las cuestiones de aplicación pueden atribuirse a una combinación de tres factores: una concepción demasiado restrictiva de la naturaleza y el papel de la administración pública como «una burocracia controladora» (Standing, 2002); una estrategia comparativa en la que la renta básica aparece como clara ganadora en comparación con las políticas asistenciales; y la convicción de que la renta básica es eficiente en términos administrativos porque no padece las numerosas deficiencias que presentan los programas de asistencia social selectiva.…”

“…1 1 Los obstáculos que examinamos más abajo son problemas que surgen particularmente, en su aspecto más radical, de un ingreso básico tal como defiende Philippe Van Parijs (1992, 1995, 1996, 2004). En otros lugares, hemos sostenido que la renta básica constituye una familia de proposiciones afines (De Wispelaere y Stirton, 2004), y que las proposiciones de este tipo, menos radicales, plantean sus propios problemas (De Wispelaere y Stirton, 2007, 2011a). …”

A disarmingly simple idea? Practical bottlenecks in the implementation of a universal basic income

“…Discussion of basic income has concentrated largely on the ethics, economics and, more recently, the politics of universal and unconditional income maintenance schemes. By contrast, little effort has gone into considering implementation issues; an unfortunate state of affairs that we have previously challenged (De Wispelaere and Stirton, 2007, 2011a, 2011b). The reasons for this neglect of implementation issues can, in our view, be attributed to a combination of three factors: an overly restrictive conception of the nature and role of public administration as a “controlling bureaucracy” (Standing, 2002); a comparative focus in which basic income easily emerges as the natural winner in comparison with selective social assistance policies; and a conviction that basic income is administratively efficient because it does not suffer from the many deficiencies found in selective social assistance programmes.…”