Conclusion: Why Should We Conduct Basic Income Experiments, Pilots, or Policies?

The main goal of this book is to inform students, researchers, practitioners, and policymakersPolicymakers about the main philosophical, epistemological, and sociologicalSociology questions stemming from UBI experiments, pilots and policies past, present, and future. To do so, we believe we should engage with those who have been involved in bringing about or evaluating such experiments, pilots, and policies. Therefore, we interviewed 18 stakeholders mostly to understand how the cases in which they have been involved provide interesting information on the goals, contexts, methodologies, and of course implementation and aftermath of UBI experiments, pilots, and policies. Based on their comprehensive answers, and the literature on UBI and cash grants, we aimed to provide a set of findings and discussions that contribute to the ongoing debate on the benefits, hurdles, and legitimacy of conducting basic income experiments and pilots, but also in the assessment of basic income policies of basic income that have been implemented. In chapter 8, we summarize the main insights of the book and we highlight three main conclusions: the first and one of the key conclusions is the role played by the context. Our case studies cannot escape their context. The second conclusion is about the nature of our case studies. In fact, they share two features: (1) they are all social science experiments or policies which are being evaluated as such, which means they inherit the limitations of the methodologies employed in such experiments, and (2) they all differ from the definition of what a UBI is. In that sense, they should probably be called quasi-basic income experiments, pilots, or policies. The third is that none of our case studies has directly led to political implementation. However, they all have been influenced by political processes and agendas. Based on these three conclusions we argue that experiments can be justified as research, political, and advocacy tools if we take the limitations and considerations discussed in this book into account and include them in the way we design, implement, and evaluate experiments. To do so, we conclude by proposing seven general principles that experiments and pilots (and even small-scale, quasi-basic income policies) should try to respect, to be justified as meaningful research, political, and advocacy mechanisms.