Three Policy Alternatives for Advancing Active Citizenship: Universal Basic Income, Universal Basic Services, and Social Economy

ABSTRACT

This article discusses three policy ideas that address the limitations of the traditional welfare state: universal basic income (UBI), universal basic services (UBS), and the social economy. As a lens from which to evaluate these policy alternatives, we develop a concept of active citizenship as an interactive and recursive process between people’s equal political influence and the institutional conditions in which they are placed. While the social policy discourse on active citizenship has centred on the debate between increasing individual responsibilities or enhancing people’s capabilities, our conception recentres the political dimension of active citizenship as people’s capacity, not only to exercise individual self-determination, but also collective self-determination over shared conditions. We conclude that, in addition to the conditions for security and autonomy, opportunities for organised social cooperation are necessary to achieve a virtuous cycle between people’s political influence and the institutions that support it.

KEYWORDS:

• Active citizenship
• universal basic income
• universal basic services
• social economy
• welfare state

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 See Bidadanure (2019, 492–494) for a review of the feminist debate on basic income.

2 Gough (2020, 4) argues that UBS has significant implications for social equality by demonstrating that in-kind benefits are worth around 76% of the post-tax incomes of the bottom quintile compared to 24% of the fourth quintile and 14% of the richest.

3 See Moulaert and Ailenei (2005) for a historical overview of the social economy in the European context.

4 See Hendriks and Dzur (2022) for discussion of citizen-led governance over collective problems from the perspective of their implications for democracy.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea [grant number NRF-2021S1A5A2A01070179]; Japan Society for the Promotion of Science [grant number 21KK0030].

Notes on contributors

Chikako Endo

Chikako Endo is Associate Professor at the Graduate School of Human Sciences, Osaka University. Her research interests include the political theory of work and welfare, democratic theory, and social citizenship.

Young Jun Choi

Young Jun Choi is a Professor at the Department of Public Policy and Management, and Director of the Institute for Welfare State Research, Yonsei University in South Korea. His research interests include ageing and public policy, social investment policy, innovation and social policy, and East Asian welfare states.