Ontological contradictions in the UK’s Universal Credit reforms

IF 2.2 4区管理学 Q2 PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION

Policy Studies Pub Date : 2023-01-18 DOI:10.1080/01442872.2023.2168636

J. Newman

引用次数: 0

Abstract

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.

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英国全民信贷改革中的本体论矛盾

2010年代的全民信用改革是英国社会保障体系的一个关键转折点。这些改革在文献中受到了广泛的批评，因为它们把太多的责任放在了福利接受者身上，使用了对贫困的文化解释，并优先考虑了基于激励的解决方案。本文认为，这些共同的批评观点实际上指向了通用信用形成过程中显而易见的矛盾，无论上述批评的力度如何，这些矛盾都是有问题的。重点是“本体论矛盾”，这源于关于个体主体如何与其物质和概念背景相关的基本假设。为了提出这一论点，在与现有的后结构主义方法的对话中发展了一个批判现实主义框架。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Policy Studies PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION-

CiteScore

5.40

自引率

4.50%

发文量

期刊介绍： These changes at the structural level of the global system have impacted upon the work of public organizations either directly or indirectly and have broadened the field of action in policy studies. It has five main areas of intellectual interest: 1.To broaden the lens of policy analysis through the publication of research which locates policy-making within a theoretical, historical or comparative perspective. 2.To widen the field of enquiry in policy analysis through the publication of research that examines policy issues in a British, comparative, international or global context. 3.To promote constructive debate on theoretical, methodological and empirical issues in policy analysis.