Recent changes in the social policy regimes of western European countries have raised questions about the normative legitimacy of policy measures. Welfare states may face difficult dilemmas when efficient social policy measures clash with principles of the liberal state, like equal treatment and individual autonomy. Is output legitimacy achieved at the expense of the input legitimacy dimensions of individual autonomy and human dignity? In this paper, a standard for evaluating the normative legitimacy of social policy interventions is proposed, and subsequently applied on the concrete example of the Norwegian introductory programs for immigrants. The paper concludes that activation measures in some of its implementations may actually represent fewer threats to input legitimacy than does the alternative regime of unconditional social assistance. © 2010 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.

Refugees Activation policy User involvement Output legitimacy Input legitimacy

immigration policy immigrant refugee Norway social policy immigration