Abstract
This paper develops a rational-choice explanation for the adoption of deterrent work–welfare programmes by recent governments in Britain and the US. Such programmes require the recipients of welfare or unemployment benefits to participate in a training programme or work activity in exchange for receiving their benefits and reflect a New Right (in contrast to a social democratic) conception of social citizenship. Governments design such policies to generate a partial separating equilibrium under which some claimants identified by the state as undeserving are discouraged from seeking benefits. These programmes are intended to overcome problems of free-riding and false claiming viewed, by the New Right, as inherent in state-administered benefit systems.
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