Abstract
This dissertation examines how temporary cost-of-living support measures, when repeatedly renewed without structural reform, reshape political expectations and welfare state legitimacy. Drawing upon a synthesis of recent literature from the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Brazil, and broader European contexts, the study investigates the mechanisms through which episodic crisis management becomes de facto welfare architecture whilst retaining its formal exceptionalism. The analysis reveals that such temporalised support normalises crisis governance, compresses citizen time horizons, and fragments the perception of welfare as a stable social right. Evidence suggests that enduringly generous welfare systems correlate with higher political trust, whereas ad hoc measures produce narrow, reciprocity-based gratitude without deepening diffuse regime legitimacy. The localisation and discretionary nature of emergency funds further undermine perceptions of fairness and equal treatment. The dissertation concludes that the core challenge for welfare legitimacy lies not in the scale of support but in its temporality and institutionalisation. Governments that manage crisis symptoms without guaranteeing a secure social floor risk fostering chronic insecurity and political alienation among vulnerable populations.
Introduction
The cost-of-living crisis that intensified across Europe from 2021 onwards presented governments with urgent demands for intervention. Rising energy prices, inflationary pressures on food and essential goods, and the lingering economic disruption from the COVID-19 pandemic combined to produce acute hardship for millions of households. In response, policymakers across the United Kingdom, Ireland, and continental Europe deployed an array of support measures—energy rebates, one-off payments, emergency funds, and targeted assistance schemes. These interventions shared a common characteristic: they were framed explicitly as temporary, exceptional responses to an extraordinary situation (Hick and Collins, 2023).
However, as the crisis persisted beyond initial projections, these ostensibly short-term measures were repeatedly renewed, expanded, and institutionalised in practice if not in name. What began as emergency patches evolved into essential components of the social safety net for vulnerable households. This transformation raises fundamental questions about the nature of welfare provision, the expectations citizens hold of the state, and the legitimacy foundations upon which modern welfare systems rest.
The academic significance of this phenomenon extends beyond immediate policy concerns. Classical theories of welfare state development emphasise the importance of institutionalisation, rights-based entitlements, and predictable provision in generating public support and political stability (Esping-Andersen, 1990). When temporary measures become structurally necessary whilst remaining formally exceptional, they challenge these theoretical frameworks and create novel configurations of state-citizen relationships. Citizens may come to depend upon support that lacks legal permanence, creating a tension between experienced necessity and formal exceptionalism that has implications for democratic governance and social cohesion.
Practically, the stakes are considerable. The United Kingdom’s Household Support Fund alone has distributed over £2.5 billion through multiple waves since 2021, yet its future remains subject to periodic renegotiation (Meers et al., 2023). Similar patterns characterise cost-of-living responses across Europe. Understanding how these arrangements affect public attitudes, trust in institutions, and perceptions of welfare legitimacy is essential for policymakers navigating the transition from crisis response to sustainable social security.
This dissertation synthesises recent empirical research to examine these dynamics systematically. It explores how the repeated renewal of temporary support measures reshapes what citizens expect from the state, how such expectations interact with welfare legitimacy, and what implications emerge for the future of social policy. The analysis draws upon studies from multiple national contexts whilst maintaining particular focus on the United Kingdom, where the tension between temporary framing and structural function has been especially pronounced.
Aim and objectives
Main aim
This dissertation aims to critically examine how the transformation of temporary cost-of-living support into de facto structural welfare provision affects political expectations and the legitimacy of welfare states.
Objectives
To achieve this aim, the dissertation pursues the following specific objectives:
1. To analyse the characteristics of temporary cost-of-living measures deployed in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and comparable European contexts, examining their evolution from emergency interventions to repeated, institutionalised provisions.
2. To investigate how the repeated renewal of temporary schemes reshapes citizen expectations regarding state support, crisis management, and social rights.
3. To examine the relationship between welfare temporality, institutionalisation, and different dimensions of political legitimacy, distinguishing between specific support for incumbent governments and diffuse regime legitimacy.
4. To assess how localised, discretionary administration of emergency funds affects perceptions of fairness, equal treatment, and welfare state legitimacy.
5. To synthesise findings regarding the implications of temporalised welfare provision for political trust, social cohesion, and the future development of social security systems.
Methodology
This dissertation employs a literature synthesis methodology, systematically reviewing and integrating findings from recent peer-reviewed research on cost-of-living responses, welfare attitudes, and political legitimacy. The approach is appropriate given the emerging nature of the phenomenon under investigation and the need to draw together insights from multiple disciplinary perspectives and national contexts.
The synthesis draws primarily upon empirical studies published between 2020 and 2025, capturing both immediate crisis responses and their evolving consequences. Sources include quantitative analyses of welfare attitudes and political trust across European countries, qualitative studies employing interviews with local authority staff and participatory research with low-income households, and theoretical contributions examining the relationship between promissory futures and political legitimacy.
The selection of literature prioritises peer-reviewed journal articles from established social policy, political science, and sociology publications. These sources are supplemented by relevant government documentation and reports from reputable research institutions where these illuminate specific policy developments. The geographical focus encompasses the United Kingdom and Ireland as primary cases, with comparative evidence drawn from Germany, Brazil, and broader European datasets to contextualise findings.
Analytical integration proceeds thematically, examining mechanisms through which temporary support arrangements affect expectations and legitimacy across different dimensions. The synthesis identifies convergent findings, tensions between different bodies of evidence, and gaps requiring further investigation. Throughout, attention is paid to the methodological characteristics of underlying studies to assess the robustness of conclusions drawn.
This approach enables the development of a coherent analytical framework for understanding temporalised welfare provision whilst acknowledging the limitations inherent in synthesising diverse methodological approaches and national contexts. The conclusions drawn are necessarily provisional, reflecting an evolving policy landscape and the early stage of academic engagement with post-pandemic cost-of-living responses.
Literature review
The emergence of temporary cost-of-living support
The cost-of-living crisis prompted governments across Europe to deploy unprecedented levels of household support through mechanisms distinct from established social security systems. In the United Kingdom and Ireland, initial responses relied heavily on one-off payments, energy rebates, and temporary funds, often passported through existing benefit infrastructure rather than enhancing core entitlements (Hick and Collins, 2023). This approach reflected both the perceived exceptionality of the crisis and political reluctance to commit to permanent expenditure increases.
As inflationary pressures persisted, these measures expanded in scale and targeting but retained their formally time-limited character. The provisional framing served multiple political functions: it signalled fiscal responsibility, preserved flexibility for future adjustment, and maintained the distinction between emergency relief and structural welfare commitments. Yet the repeated renewal of ostensibly temporary schemes created a growing disjuncture between formal characterisation and practical function.
The United Kingdom’s Household Support Fund exemplifies this trajectory. Established in 2021 as a crisis response scheme, it has undergone multiple waves of renewal, cumulatively distributing over £2.5 billion (Meers et al., 2023). Interviews with local authority staff reveal deep ambivalence about this arrangement. Administrators describe the fund as “sticking plaster” provision—cash-limited, discretionary, and subject to unpredictable renewal cycles that impede strategic planning. The fund increasingly serves to plug gaps left by inadequate central social security provision, functioning as de facto welfare architecture whilst lacking the permanence, predictability, and rights-based character traditionally associated with social security systems.
Participatory research with low-income parents corroborates these administrative perspectives. Jordan et al. (2025) document how provisional support mechanisms exacerbate chronic insecurity, creating gaps in the support system that fail to provide sustainable protection. Participants describe living in a “permanent state of crisis” that provisional measures can ameliorate temporarily but not resolve. The study reveals that hardship has become a continuing reality for many households, not an exceptional circumstance warranting time-limited intervention.
Effects on political expectations
The repeated renewal of temporary schemes reshapes citizen expectations in several documented ways. Most fundamentally, such arrangements normalise episodic crisis management as the primary mode of state response to economic hardship. Rather than establishing predictable rights-based support, governments signal that assistance will be forthcoming only in response to demonstrated emergency conditions and will remain contingent upon periodic political decisions to continue provision.
This normalisation operates at multiple levels. For households dependent upon temporary support, it creates persistent uncertainty about future circumstances, compressing planning horizons and maintaining heightened anxiety even during periods when support is available. For the broader public, it establishes crisis governance as the expected template for addressing socioeconomic challenges, potentially reducing support for permanent structural investments in social security.
Evidence from qualitative research suggests that repeated temporary schemes encourage expectations of ad hoc bailouts rather than transparent national entitlements (Meers et al., 2023). Support becomes mediated through local discretion and third-sector actors, creating variable experiences shaped by geographical location and administrative capacity rather than uniform application of social rights. This fragmentation may generate gratitude toward specific providers whilst undermining confidence in the welfare state as an institution.
Beckert’s (2020) theoretical analysis of promissory legitimacy illuminates the temporal dimensions of these dynamics. Political authority in modern societies relies substantially on credible promises about the future—assurances that current arrangements will yield stability, security, and prosperity over time. When such promises lose credibility, legitimacy becomes fragile and social life tends toward anomie. In the context of cost-of-living responses, governments promise that crisis measures are temporary whilst the underlying crisis itself feels permanent to affected households. This gap between official temporariness and lived permanence undermines belief in future-oriented promises and may erode the foundations of political trust.
Welfare legitimacy, deservingness, and reciprocity
Research on public attitudes toward welfare reveals important distinctions between different dimensions of legitimacy that illuminate the likely effects of temporalised provision. Gillissen, Goubin and Ruelens (2025) demonstrate that enduringly generous cash-transfer systems across Europe are associated with higher overall political trust. Crucially, this relationship reflects long-term welfare generosity rather than short-term fluctuations—temporary shifts in benefit levels have little demonstrable effect on political trust. This finding implies that one-off or stop-gap responses are unlikely to rebuild institutional trust, regardless of their immediate financial value to recipients.
The distinction between specific and diffuse support, drawn from political legitimacy theory, proves particularly relevant. Layton, Donaghy and Rennó (2017) examine Brazil’s Bolsa Família programme, finding that conditional cash transfers increased trust in core state institutions but did not significantly change broader regime support. Recipients expressed gratitude toward the government providing benefits without this translating into deeper commitment to democratic institutions or the welfare state as such. This pattern suggests that temporalised cost-of-living schemes are likely to produce narrow, reciprocity-based support for incumbent governments rather than principled legitimacy for welfare provision itself.
Hua (2024) similarly finds that specific support generated by crisis interventions may not deepen diffuse regime legitimacy. Citizens may appreciate particular measures without extending this appreciation to the underlying political system or the broader project of collective social protection. When support is explicitly framed as temporary and exceptional, this distinction may be especially pronounced—recipients understand they are receiving discretionary assistance rather than claiming established rights.
Research on welfare attitudes in Germany provides further nuance. Teichler and Gundert (2025) examine political alienation among long-term basic income support recipients, finding that such alienation is mediated by experiences of material deprivation and social exclusion. However, their analysis also reveals that trustful, supportive interactions with welfare authorities can partially offset alienation. This suggests that implementation quality matters significantly: discretionary, crisis-style schemes risk reinforcing feelings of arbitrariness and exclusion unless administered respectfully and predictably.
Crisis dynamics and thermostatic adjustment
Studies of welfare attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic offer insights into how crisis conditions affect public support for social policy. Ebbinghaus, Lehner and Naumann (2022) document short-term increases in German public support for welfare expansion during the pandemic, followed by thermostatic adjustment as citizens became concerned about fiscal costs. This pattern suggests that crisis-induced support may not translate into durable shifts in welfare preferences.
Cost-of-living measures that are explicitly framed as temporary and subject to constant renegotiation may intensify this thermostatic dynamic. Citizens are invited to perceive welfare assistance as an extra that can and should be dialled back once emergency conditions subside, rather than as a stable social right with enduring moral and fiscal justification. Over time, this framing may weaken the perceived legitimacy of welfare spending and strengthen arguments for retrenchment.
Yet the relationship between economic insecurity and welfare preferences is not straightforward. Burgoon and Dekker (2010) demonstrate that experience of flexible or precarious employment tends to raise demand for protection and targeted assistance. When temporary supports become experienced as indispensable to survival, they may foster expectations that the state must provide ongoing help—expectations that the legal and political framing of these supports as discretionary structurally frustrates. This tension between experienced necessity and formal exceptionalism is likely a significant driver of disillusion among affected populations.
Localisation, discretion, and fragmented legitimacy
The shift toward localised discretionary funds represents a particularly consequential dimension of temporalised welfare provision. The Household Support Fund exemplifies this trend, devolving crisis response to local authorities operating within centrally determined financial constraints. Research documents significant tensions in this arrangement.
Local authorities report navigating competing pressures: reaching those in greatest need whilst avoiding perceptions that recipients are becoming dependent on crisis funds; responding to acute hardship whilst operating within severe funding limits and bearing substantial administrative burdens (Meers et al., 2023). These tensions are exacerbated by the unpredictability of renewal decisions, which impedes strategic planning and efficient allocation of administrative resources.
Participatory research documents the consequences for recipients. Jordan et al. (2025) identify pronounced postcode lottery effects, with access to support varying substantially across localities. Low awareness of available assistance compounds these inequalities, with hardship shaped as much by inadequate or poorly designed interventions as by the absence of intervention altogether. Some participants describe encountering support arrangements that appear arbitrary or incomprehensible, undermining confidence that the system operates according to transparent principles.
These patterns have direct implications for welfare legitimacy. Perceptions of fairness and equal treatment are foundational to public acceptance of social protection systems. When access to support depends upon geographical location, local administrative capacity, or individual luck in navigating complex discretionary systems, these perceptions are fundamentally threatened. The erosion of uniform national entitlements in favour of variable local provision may thus undermine legitimacy even when aggregate spending remains substantial.
Discussion
The literature synthesis reveals a coherent pattern with significant implications for welfare state development. When temporary cost-of-living supports effectively become structural whilst remaining framed as exceptional, they generate distinctive configurations of political expectations and legitimacy challenges that merit careful analytical attention.
The emergence of patchwork crisis-oriented welfare
The evidence indicates that repeated temporary measures are entrenching a patchwork, crisis-oriented welfare regime rather than comprehensive social security. This represents a significant departure from the trajectory of welfare state development that characterised the post-war period in many European countries, which emphasised institutionalisation, rights-based entitlements, and predictable provision. The current configuration combines elements of substantial state intervention with characteristics typically associated with residual welfare models: discretion, targeting, and conditionality.
This hybrid arrangement creates particular challenges for legitimacy. Classical analyses suggest that institutional welfare states generate their own support by creating stakeholders across income groups and establishing expectations of reciprocity over the life course (Korpi and Palme, 1998). Crisis-oriented provision lacks these legitimacy-generating mechanisms. Support remains concentrated among the most vulnerable, potentially stigmatising recipients and limiting middle-class investment in the system’s continuation.
The temporal dimension of legitimacy
Perhaps the most significant finding concerns the temporal dimensions of welfare legitimacy. The research consistently indicates that the duration and institutionalisation of welfare provision matter more for political trust than short-term generosity levels. Gillissen, Goubin and Ruelens’s (2025) finding that enduring generosity correlates with trust whilst temporary fluctuations do not directly challenges the assumption that crisis spending will generate equivalent political returns to structural investment.
This temporal sensitivity helps explain the distinctive legitimacy dynamics of temporalised provision. Citizens appear capable of distinguishing between rights-based entitlements with predictable futures and discretionary assistance subject to periodic renewal. The former generates confidence and trust; the latter may generate gratitude without securing deeper legitimacy. Beckert’s (2020) analysis of promissory legitimacy provides theoretical grounding for this distinction: political authority depends upon credible futures, and temporary framing inherently undermines such credibility.
The gap between experienced necessity and formal exceptionalism
The synthesis reveals a fundamental tension at the heart of current arrangements. For many households, cost-of-living support has become experienced as necessary for survival—not exceptional assistance for unusual circumstances but essential provision meeting ongoing needs. Yet this experienced necessity exists within a framework that formally characterises such support as exceptional, temporary, and contingent.
This gap generates what might be termed structural frustration. Citizens develop expectations that the state must provide continuing help based on their lived experience of need and the pattern of repeated renewals. Yet the legal and political framework refuses to recognise these expectations as entitlements, maintaining instead the discretionary, provisional character of provision. Research on political alienation among long-term benefit recipients suggests that such structural frustration may contribute to disengagement and disillusion, particularly where administrative interactions reinforce feelings of precariousness and contingency (Teichler and Gundert, 2025).
Localisation and the fragmentation of citizenship
The devolution of crisis response to local authorities introduces additional legitimacy challenges related to equal citizenship. When access to support varies by postcode, and when administrative capacity and local priorities shape individual experiences, the universalist principles underlying modern welfare states are compromised. This fragmentation may prove particularly damaging for legitimacy because it undermines the perception that the welfare state treats citizens equally according to transparent rules.
The documented tensions between local authority staff—navigating contradictory pressures around need, dependency, and resource constraints—suggest that localisation also creates legitimacy problems at the administrative level. Staff unable to provide consistent, reliable support may themselves lose confidence in the arrangements they administer, potentially affecting the quality of interactions with claimants in ways that compound legitimacy deficits.
Implications for future welfare development
The analysis suggests that current trajectories pose significant risks for welfare state legitimacy. The production of narrow, reciprocity-based gratitude rather than principled regime support means that temporary measures may fail to generate durable political foundations for social protection. Thermostatic dynamics documented in pandemic research suggest that crisis-framed support may actually weaken longer-term welfare legitimacy by encouraging perceptions that such spending is discretionary rather than necessary.
At the same time, the evidence indicates that structural reform toward genuine institutionalisation could generate substantial legitimacy returns. The consistent association between enduring generosity and political trust suggests that converting temporary measures into permanent entitlements would strengthen rather than weaken welfare state foundations. The challenge lies in achieving such conversion in political contexts shaped by fiscal constraint narratives and scepticism toward welfare expansion.
Conclusions
This dissertation has examined how the transformation of temporary cost-of-living support into de facto structural provision affects political expectations and welfare state legitimacy. The analysis achieves its stated objectives and yields several significant conclusions.
Regarding the first objective, the synthesis confirms that temporary cost-of-living measures in the United Kingdom, Ireland, and comparable contexts have evolved from genuine emergency interventions into repeated, institutionalised provisions that increasingly serve functions previously performed by core social security systems. The Household Support Fund exemplifies this trajectory, combining structural necessity with formal exceptionalism in ways that create distinctive policy configurations.
Addressing the second objective, the evidence demonstrates that repeated renewal of temporary schemes reshapes citizen expectations toward episodic crisis management rather than predictable rights-based support. Households dependent upon such provision experience permanent precariousness, whilst the broader public is encouraged to view social protection as discretionary emergency assistance rather than a fundamental social right.
The third objective focused on welfare legitimacy reveals crucial distinctions. Temporary measures may generate specific support for incumbent governments but are unlikely to deepen diffuse regime legitimacy or strengthen principled commitment to welfare state institutions. The temporal dimension proves crucial: enduring generosity correlates with trust in ways that short-term fluctuations do not replicate.
Concerning the fourth objective, localised discretionary administration introduces additional legitimacy challenges through postcode lottery effects, variable access, and the erosion of uniform citizenship. These patterns undermine perceptions of fairness and equal treatment that are foundational to welfare state acceptance.
The fifth objective integrates these findings into a coherent assessment: current trajectories risk entrenching arrangements that combine substantial state expenditure with fragile legitimacy foundations. The core issue is not the scale of support but its temporality and institutionalisation. Governments managing crisis symptoms without guaranteeing a secure social floor may foster chronic insecurity, political alienation, and conditional gratitude rather than stable welfare legitimacy.
These conclusions carry significant implications for policy and future research. Policymakers must recognise that the framing and institutionalisation of support matters for legitimacy outcomes, not merely its financial value. Research should continue examining how temporalised provision affects different population groups and how transitions from crisis response to structural reform might be achieved. Longitudinal studies tracking welfare attitudes through the evolution of cost-of-living responses would prove particularly valuable.
The welfare states that emerged in the post-war period drew legitimacy from their promise of security across the life course. When contemporary governments respond to hardship through measures explicitly characterised as temporary whilst these measures become structurally essential, they fundamentally challenge this promissory foundation. Restoring welfare legitimacy may require not simply maintaining or increasing support levels but converting provisional crisis response into the predictable, rights-based social security that evidence suggests citizens both need and are willing to support.
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