Affiliation:
1. Humboldt University, Germany
Abstract
The idea of universal basic income is recieving increasing attention in the political, media and public agendas. This policy proposal constitutes a radical departure from the orthodox welfare rationale of giving to those in need, or attaching conditions to welfare support. Given the permutation that a UBI presents, many pilot projects and field experiments are being carried out globally to test the effects of this novel policy idea. Key questions arise from these developments: are the lessons learned from these experiments being fed back into the policy process? Are the pilot project results guiding and informing policymakers? Overall, can we observe any political effects of such scientific efforts? I address these questions through a qualitative case study analysis of the B-Mincome project. Through an in-depth analysis of this pilot, some of the key factors influencing the (limited) policy and political effects of the pilot project have been identified. The B-Mincome case study shows that the barriers to policy change were in place well before the pilot, and evidently, remained unaltered by it. The political landscape in Barcelona's City Council, its economic powers and institutional context were unchanged by the pilot, and in fact shaped the pilot design, moving it away from the UBI proposal. The B-Mincome experience illustrates the need to accommodate the pilot design to the politics and economics of the experiment, and shows the unintended consequences that such an adaptation of the pilot design may have in relation to its original objectives. In the case of Barcelona, this has meant a move away from a UBI-style pilot design, resulting in very limited effects on the debate or policy design of cash transfers, having a greater policy impact on active polices instead. However, by taking a broader look at Spanish and Catalan politics, our analysis has shown that unexpected factors may end up triggering a debate much more effectively than a pilot project.
Subject
Economics, Econometrics and Finance (miscellaneous),Public Administration,Sociology and Political Science
Reference31 articles.
1. Scientific information and uncertainty: Challenges for the use of science in policymaking
2. Ballesté Isern E (2018) El poder en los movimientos. Jóvenes activistas en el post-15M: estudio de caso sobre la Marea Blanca, la PAH y los Colectivos Anticapitalistas en Lleida. Doctoral dissertation, Universitat de Lleida, Spain.
3. Barcelona en Comú, programa electoral 2015
4. The Functions of the Social Worker in Empowering: The Voices of Consumers and Professionals
Cited by
5 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献