This report provides both a record and a critical assessment of the first workshop of the Foundation for Law, Justice and Society Programme on The Social Contract Revisited: The Modern Welfare State. The workshop was held in Oxford on 18-20 April 2007.

This policy brief will discuss some normative and political aspects of the feasibility of a welfare reform based upon the idea of a basic income.

Global inequality has risen in recent years, even in circumstances where aggregate growth rates have risen.

‘Loyalty benefits’ are transfer payments designed to motivate or reward citizens for serving the state, either tangibly or symbolically. Classic examples are benefits to soldiers and civil servants, and today, special benefits granted to political refugees.

But like the trademark social insurance schemes invented by conservative welfare states, loyalty benefits may also be used as a way of reinforcing status barriers between groups, including ethnic hierarchies embodied in the collective identity projects of states.