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The Public Administration Case Against Participation Income, Jurgen De Wispelaere, Lindsay Stirton

Jurgen De Wispelaere

Anthony Atkinson’s proposal for a participation income (PI) has been acclaimed as a workable compromise between the aspirations of unconditional basic income proposals and the political acceptability of the workfare model. This article argues that PI functions poorly in terms of a number of essential administrative tasks that any welfare scheme must perform. This leads to a trilemma of participation income, which suggests that PI can only retain its apparent ability to satisfy the requirements of universalist and client-activation approaches to welfare at the cost of imposing a substantial burden on administrators and welfare clients alike. Consequently, the main apparent …