Conditional inclusion and the enduring appeal of colonial poor laws

Abstract

Frustrated advocates of universal social protection often denounce the long shadow of the English poor laws, pointing to the continued prevalence of means-testing, conditionality (on work and/or behaviour) and parsimony, whilst paying less attention to the English poor laws’ distinctive acknowledgement of public responsibility for the poor through programmes financed out of taxes or other ‘non-contributory’ sources. Some or other of these features of the English poor laws have been reflected – to varying extents and in varying combinations – across much of the world, including contexts where English models were replicated, contexts where those models were rejected, and contexts where their influence was indirect or even not evident. The diffusion of the English poor laws outside of Britain between the seventeenth and twentieth centuries suggests that their widespread appeal was rooted in the possibility they offered for ‘conditional inclusion’: The decentralization of authority meant that local elites were able to offer a vision of inclusion (or social citizenship) whilst at the same time rendering actual provision conditional on the poor allowing themselves to be disciplined according to the norms or interests of those local elites. It was thus their adaptability that has underpinned – and continues to underlie – the appeal of the English poor laws.