The last few years have seen an exponential rise in interest in basic income. To date, most analysis has taken either a normative (e.g. Van Parijs & Vanderboght 2017) or a descriptive (Torry 2016) perspective. There have been comparatively few attempts to try to understand the political economy of basic income and to identify potential political constituencies. An obvious approach to exploring the potential sources of support for basic income is to examine the determinants of welfare state attitudes and preferences. Existing research has identified a variety of labour market risks as significant predictors of welfare state preferences, whether redistribution (Cusack, Iversen, & Rehm, 2006), social spending (Soskice & Iversen, 2001), job creation or the contributory benefit principle (Häusermann, Kurer, & Schwander, 2015). There is also a common narrative about basic income that it is a response to growing labour market risks and that it is a policy for the precariat (Standing, 2011). However, existing research does not sufficiently indicate whether those at risk would support a basic income. Using European Values Study data from 2008, this paper tests the significance of labour market risk in predicting two previously unexplored preferences related to basic income - attitudes to unemployment benefit conditionality and the importance of work. These indicators are shown alongside redistribution and government responsibility preferences to illustrate the multi-dimensional nature of potential basic income support.
While broad indicators of labour market risk were mostly found to be significant predictors of preferences for redistribution and government responsibility, this was not the case for attitudes to conditionality and work. Increased levels of skills or education were also found to predict opposition to conditionality and work. This implies that a values-based rather than risk-based account can explain attitudes to conditionality and work better. Hence, it is also unlikely that support for basic income over other redistributive measures could be related solely to a risk cleavage. This suggests that there is a tension between two potential constituencies for basic income: those that demand redistributive government intervention and those that demand a less conditional welfare system that does not stress the primacy of paid work. Basic income or similar proposals could be a site of compromise or the basis of a coalition between these two groups. Yet, it may also mean that basic income advocates are forced to choose to emphasise one or the other in order to build voting coalitions that are able to command a majority of their populations.
