PI is perceived as more legitimate than other BI schemes since it discourages free-riding.

A crucial aspect of Atkinson’s idea for PI was that certain social rights are tied to social participation. In other words, PI is for those who participate in society. PI bridges the gap between those who think universal social protection and inclusion are the key objectives of the welfare state and those who think the main goal of the welfare state is to promote the socially productive behav-iour of adult citizens. In line with UBI, the core notion of PI is that social inclusion involves the empowerment of human agency (Hogget 2001; Lister 2004).

The results from the BI experiments reviewed above are encouraging for PI. The targeted group of social assistance recipients do not seem to object to participation conditions that enforce reciprocity if the range of activities included in the participation conditions helps them to improve their lives.

Linking benefit receipt to social participation brings PI in line with social insurance logic. With this approach, Atkinson defines a society as a group of people who participate in it, which means that he understands society as a living and active unit that thrives on the contributions of its members (Hiilamo and Komp 2018). Anybody who is part of this group can derive social benefits from it and has obligations towards it.

Participation condition is established to prevent free-riding and to ensure legitimacy of the insurance system. This is an important notion in the wake of increasing income inequalities. Those “payers” with higher income need to trust that the “receivers” are not passively exploiting the system. Atkinson (1996) believes PI “offers the only realistic way in which governments may be persuaded that Citizen’s Income offers a better route forward than the dead end of means-tested assistance. This is particularly true at the European level, where the driving forces are very much concerned with the labour market.”

The precise nature of PI as a policy idea depends on the sort of activities that policy makers allow to satisfy the requirements of participation. In principle, PI may be realized by a scheme that resembles workfare or alternatively by one that is barely distinguishable from UBI (De Wispelaere 2015). Atkinson’s original idea clearly departs from workfare. Atkinson only wished to exclude access to PI for “those who devoted their lives to pure leisure” (Atkinson 2015, 221). Participation is conceptually clearly distinct from workfare because it expands the notion of social participation well beyond the narrow frame of labour market participation. For Atkinson, forms of participation include a range of socially useful activities such as caring for an elderly relative, volunteering in a neighbourhood project, engaging in a human capital-enhancing activity (e.g., vocational training or studying for an educational qualification), and working as an employee or self-employed. However, PI recipients may be exempted from participation requirements on grounds of sickness, injury, disability or other kinds of barriers.