ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an anatomy of conditionality by exploring the constituent 'techniques' in greater detail. It highlights the enormous diversity captured under the banner of welfare conditionality. Welfare conditionality can also involve promised access to some kind of a reward as an incentive to comply. The chapter considers conditional benefit systems, J. Griggs and M. Evans distinguish between administrative and behavioural conduct conditions, emphasising that receipt of benefits is always dependent upon certain 'actions' associated with the processing of claims and maintenance of entitlement. Perhaps the most distinctive element of behaviourally-conditional forms of welfare is the sanction itself, that is, the loss or deprivation imposed on the recipient or claimant as a consequence of failure to complying with the conduct requirements. It is this 'punitive' aspect of conditionality that attracts most controversy, and some have drawn parallels with criminal justice policy, wherein sanctions such as fines or imprisonment are used to achieve policy goals of deterrence, retribution and/or restitution.
