Parading Utopia on the road to nowhere? An introduction to the special issue on the policy impact of the European basic income experiments
| Author | Joe Chrisp,Jurgen De Wispelaere |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13882627221122797 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Parading Utopia on the road to
nowhere? An introduction to
the special issue on the policy
impact of the European basic
income experiments
Joe Chrisp
Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath, UK
Jurgen De Wispelaere
Stockholm School of Economics in Riga, Latvia
Abstract
Basic income experiments have emerged across Europe in recent years, but until now analysis has
focused on their design and the scientific interpretation of their results, rather than the subse-
quent policy impact of these projects. This special issue addresses this gap. The papers all focus
on whether and how the European basic income experiments have made an observable impact
on the basic income debate and social security reform more generally. The special issue includes
country case studies of the three countries in Europe that have completed their experiments,
Finland, the Netherlands and Spain, as well as a case study of Scotland, where a feasibility study
did not result in a field experiment, and of Ireland, which is in the process of planning at least
one experiment. Two papers then also examine the effect of these experiments on the debate
at EU level and outside Europe, in Australia. The special issue provides a novel contribution
that advances both the scholarly and policy debates surrounding basic income at a time when
COVID-19 appears to have increased interest in the policy and equally seems to have propelled
the idea of experimenting with basic income even further into the mainstream.
Keywords
Basic income, policy impact, experiments, UBI, conditionality
Corresponding author:
Joe Chrisp, Institute for Policy Research, University of Bath, Claverton Down, Bath BA2 7AY, UK.
Email: jmc235@bath.ac.uk
Article
European Journal of Social Security
2022, Vol. 24(3) 167–176
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/13882627221122797
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