The Strivers and the Skivers: Public Opinion, Political Discourse, and Changes to Benefit Access

This paper examines the connection between conceptions of deservingness and recent policies altering access to benefits for the unemployed. Current economic difficulties in numerous European countries have significantly increased the number of unemployed persons while often simultaneously constricting government spending capacity. The frequent result has been restrictions on benefit access, adding to gaps in access – a shift that contrasts starkly with various pre-crisis policies intended to correct for gaps in welfare systems.

This essay will approach these conflicting trends from two directions, starting from a focus on recent French, Italian, and British reforms. This will involve a qualitative assessment of the extent to which various arguments about deservingness have played a central role in government- and party-based arguments in favour of and against policies reforming access to benefits. On the basis of party meeting minutes, parliamentary debate records, and newspaper coverage, the paper will highlight the different conceptions of desert employed, as well as the comparative weight given to social scientific justifications for the preferred policy. The essay will then proceed to connect these arguments, and the resultant policy outcomes, to popular opinion both in our countries of interest and across Europe (using quantitative analysis of survey data). This will entail an investigation into the factors shaping cross-national and within-country variation, with a particular eye to the role of personal access to benefits and the extent of society-wide gaps in access. The goal here is to examine the interplay between these attitudes, government/party positions, reform initiatives, and policy outcomes.