A theory article argues that internet access, devices and digital know-how can become quiet requirements for using welfare services.
The article examines digital public services through theories of social citizenship and welfare states. It argues that rights can remain legally available while becoming harder to use when people need internet connectivity, a suitable device or digital literacy to reach services.
The authors distinguish this process from the digital divide, digital stratification and welfare conditionality. They propose four criteria for identifying it in empirical research, along with institutional design principles intended to prevent digital systems from making social protection more dependent on a person’s market position. Turkey’s welfare context is used to show how digitalization may interact with limited capacity to reduce people’s dependence on the market.
How digital access becomes a barrier
The article’s central contribution is a theoretical concept: the “digital citizenship prerequisite.” It describes a situation in which digital capacity becomes an unstated condition for exercising social rights, even though those rights have not been removed in law.
The authors argue that this creates a form of indirect or tacit re-commodification: access to services intended to reduce dependence on the market becomes linked to resources that are unevenly distributed, such as internet access, smart devices and digital literacy. They identify people with low incomes, limited education, older people and rural residents as groups that may face structural exclusion. The article differentiates the concept from existing work on the digital divide, digital stratification and conditionality, and proposes four criteria for testing it empirically.
Why online access affects rights
The argument shifts attention from whether a social right exists on paper to whether people can actually use it. If public services become primarily digital without suitable institutional safeguards, the people most in need of protection from market-based exclusion may face additional barriers to obtaining services.
The article therefore treats digital access as a social-policy and accountability issue, not only as a question of technology or internet use. Its proposed design principles are intended to preserve the practical reach of social rights as services move online.
Theory, not outcome data
This is a theoretical article, not an empirical study reporting new measurements or testing outcomes in a sample. It builds its argument through social-policy theory and a systematic synthesis of literature on the digital divide, e-government, conditional welfare and platform capitalism. Its main output is a set of testable theoretical propositions, four proposed identification criteria and institutional design principles.
The claims about exclusion are therefore a theoretical account of how digitalization can operate, rather than evidence that quantifies the size of the effect. The Turkish welfare context illustrates the argument, but the excerpts do not provide a specific dataset, comparison or measured estimate of impacts across countries or groups.
// Source
Politik Ekonomik Kuram · 2026 · DOI: 10.30586/pek.1915838
Authors: Işın Ulaş Ertuğrul Yılmazer
Institutions: Maltepe University
