'Market workfare': Social security, social regulation and competitiveness in the 1990s

A Regulation approach framework has been adopted to analyse the very rapid period of change in social security policy since the late 1980s, It is argu ed that the changes can be explained in terms of a number of regulatory dil emmas which emerged or were intensified under neo-liberal capital accumulat ion, Some of the regulatory dilemmas - high levels of economic inactivity, inflationary pressures consequent to higher employment and low levels of wa ges - it was thought could be managed through the social security system us ing what we call 'market workfare'; by which we mean in-work means-tested s ocial security benefits which have some measure of compulsion to work attac hed, such that it counts as workfare, The aim of in-work benefits is to red uce wages further so that the market can respond by creating more low-wage employment, By this stratagem it is the market which responds to labour dem and, rather than the government creating work opportunities. The parliament ary neo-liberal right's approach to 'market workfare' is discussed, and the n it is suggested that the marked similarities between New Labour and the p revious parliamentary neo-liberal right can be explained because both admin istrations were attempting to manage the same regulatory dilemmas.