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Paper short abstract

We examine the Dutch Participation Act in Balance, analysing how “trust” and “balance” are institutionalized in welfare reform. We argue that these concepts may re-legitimise infrastructures of monitoring and conditionality, framing reform as infrastructural repair rather than transformation.

Paper long abstract

Until 2026, Dutch social assistance had been regulated by the 2015 Participation Act, which consolidated earlier welfare provisions while intensifying welfare conditionality. We conceptualize the Participation Act as a socio-technical assemblage in which policy logics, municipal governance, and digital infrastructures translate assumptions about deservingness into practices of monitoring and sanctioning. Thus, we consider the Participation Act as a hostile technology. In 2026, the Participation Act was revised in what is called the Participation Act in Balance. The Participation Act in Balance aims to embed practices based on trust and rebalance the relationship between citizens and the state. This presentation examines how the concepts of trust and balance are constructed and institutionalized, and what this reveals about the reconfiguration of welfare governance. First, we examine how trust is configured through administrative rules, discretionary space, and information obligations. We discuss how trust is embedded within a broader logic of responsibilization, where beneficiaries are responsible for demonstrating compliance. Second, we analyse the political meaning of “balance” as a discursive technology and we aim to understand how this concept reveals or conceals power asymmetries. Third, we theorize welfare reform as infrastructural repair. We examine how reforms incorporate critique of punitive welfare governance while stabilizing the underlying socio-technical infrastructure of welfare conditionality and under what conditions reform functions primarily as the repair of institutional legitimacy as opposed to institutional transformation. With this threefold focus, we will gain an understanding of how welfare reforms can re-legitimise disciplinary infrastructures.