The policy and political consequences of the B-Mincome pilot project
| Author | Leire Rincón García |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13882627221123347 |
| Published date | 01 September 2022 |
| Date | 01 September 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
The policy and political
consequences of the B-Mincome
pilot project
Leire Rincón García
1
1
Humboldt University, Germany
Abstract
The idea of universal ba sic income is recievin g increasing attenti on in the political, m edia and
public agendas. Thi s policy proposal const itutes a radical depar ture from the orthodox welf are
rationale of givin g to those in need, or atta ching conditions to we lfare support. Given t he per-
mutation that a UBI prese nts, many pilot projects an d field experiments are being carried out
globally to test the e ffects of this novel poli cy idea. Key questions arise from the se
developments: are the l essons learned from these experiments being fed back into the polic y
process? Are the pilot project results guiding and informing policymakers? Overall, can we
observe any political effects of such scientific efforts? I addre ss these questions th rough a quali-
tative case study ana lysis of the B-Mincom e project. Through an in-dep th analysis of this pilo t,
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 pil ot, and evidently, remained unalte red by it. The political la nd-
scape in Barcelona’s Ci ty Council, its econom ic powers and instituti onal context were
unchanged by the pil ot, 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 e xperiment, and shows t he unintended conseq uences that such an adap -
tation of the pilot d esign may have in relation to its ori ginal objectives. In t he case of Barcelona,
this has meant a move away from a UBI-styl e pilot design, resulti ng in very limited effec ts 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 C atalan politics, our a nalysis has shown that
unexpected factors may end up triggering a debate much more effectively than a pilot project.
Keywords
Pilot projects, cash transfers, universal basic income, political consequences, welfare reform
Corresponding author:
Leire Rincón García, Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt University, Universitätsstraße 3B, 10117 Berlin, Germany.
E-mail: leire.rincon.garcia@hu-berlin.de
Article
European Journal of Social Security
2022, Vol. 24(3) 213–229
© The Author(s) 2022
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/13882627221123347
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Introduction
Universal basic income (UBI) is the idea of providing every human being with material security.
Defined as a universal (for everyone), unconditional (no strings attached), individual and periodic
cash payment, it has moved from being perceived as a utopian idea, to an increasingly feasible
policy proposal to reform the welfare state. Yet, UBI radically departs from the orthodox welfare
rationale of giving to those in need, or to those who have previously contributed to the system.
Given that it is a new, unimplemented policy idea which radically departs from the existing policy
rationale, many –those in favour and against –are testing its potential effects through pilot projects
and experiments,despite the limitations ofthese tools (Standing, 2021; Widerquist, 2018). Indeed,the
use of scientific methods and empirical evidence to inform policy is increasingly documented by the
literature (aside from the growing scolarship, there is a journal dedicated to this field: Evidence &
Policy). However, in the case of UBI it is not so clear whether the experiments fulfil a scientific
role, informing about the consequences of such a proposal, or whether the actors that engage in
such processes haveother strategic motivations. Indeed,some literature documents the use of experi-
ments as tools to promote the caseof a UBI amongst its proponents (Caputo and Liu, 2020; Frankel,
2020), althoughwe also know that governments andorganisations who are not necessarilysupportive
of a UBI have also launched related experiments (e.g. in the case of Finland).
The theoretical and empirical puzzle addressed in this paper does not revolve so much around the
motivations for UBI pilots, but rather concerns the extent to which the effort of undertaking
UBI-related pilots actually serves to inform policymakers, and to what degree the resulting evidence
has an impact on the policymaking process and on the politics of UBI and welfare reform. As pre-
viously mentioned, scholarship surrounding the use of science in policymaking is growing fast
(Ascher, 2004; Clark et al., 2002; Hammond et al., 1983; Joyce, 2003; Sabatier and Weible, 2019;
and a key book contribution: Cairney, 2016).The key remaining question is to what extent this evi-
dence is being coherently used to inform policy and having an impact on the policy process. This
question is particularly relevant to UBI given that there is widespread use of RCTs to test this
policy and inform of its consequences (for a review of UBI related projects see Hasdell, 2020).
Although there is no theory that specifically addresses the use of scientific information in the
policy process, there is some literature which could inform us about its potential impact. In a
key book contribution, Cairney (2016) highlights the role of the policy process, which is not
linear, and the diversity of factors that influence such process, to explain why the policy-evaluation
stage may not lead smoothly to the implementation stage. The author also points to a potential mis-
match between the supply of scientific information (from the researchers and scientists) and the
demand for such information (from the policymaker side). This contribution however, tackles a
very particular case study and context in which policymakers are both on the supply and the
demand side: during the B-Mincome project the policymakers were both asking for scientific infor-
mation and generating it through the design of a pilot project. Hence, we focus on other aspects of
the policy process to understand how these influenced the extent to which the results of the projects
were taken up in the policy process. Two sets of factors are indicated as important. On the one hand,
we have environmental factors, which are the contextual characteristics in which the pilot took
place, like the institutions, networks, actors, policy contexts and events; and on the other hand,
we have a set of psychological factors, set at the individual level, which are the prior beliefs and
ideas of policymakers in the decision-making process (Cairney, 2016).
This paper addresses the puzzle of the impact of scientific information on the policy process by
examining the case of the B-Mincome project, implemented in the city of Barcelona between 2017
214 European Journal of Social Security 24(3)
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