Ontological contradictions in the UK’s Universal Credit reforms

Jack Newman

Policy Studies, 2023, vol. 44, issue 6, 767-785

Abstract: The Universal Credit reforms of the 2010s were a crucial turning point in the UK’s social security system. The reforms have been widely criticized in the literature for placing too much responsibility on welfare recipients, for using cultural explanations of poverty, and for prioritizing incentive-based solutions. This article argues that these common points of criticism actually point to demonstrable contradictions in the formation of Universal Credit, contradictions that are problematic regardless of the strength of the aforementioned criticisms. The focus is on “ontological contradictions”, which derive from fundamental assumptions about how individual agents relate to their material and ideational contexts. To make this argument, a critical realist framework is developed in a dialogue with existing poststructuralist approaches.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1080/01442872.2023.2168636 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:cposxx:v:44:y:2023:i:6:p:767-785

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/cpos20

DOI: 10.1080/01442872.2023.2168636

Access Statistics for this article

Policy Studies is currently edited by Toby James

More articles in Policy Studies from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().