DOI: 10.30586/pek.1915838 ISSN: 2587-2567

Tacit Conditionality: The Digital Citizenship Prerequisite and the Transformation of Social Rights

Işın Ulaş Ertuğrul Yılmazer
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This article examines the structural effects of the digitalization of public services on social rights within the framework of social policy theory, proposing the concept of "digital citizenship prerequisite" to conceptualize this process. The central argument is that the transfer of public services to digital platforms silently erodes the universality claim of the welfare state (not through legal means but in practice), producing a tacit re-commodification process by conditioning access on digital capacity, without directly privatizing decommodified services. As internet connectivity, smart devices, and digital literacy become de facto prerequisites for exercising social rights, the groups least equipped with digital capacity (those with low incomes, limited education, older age, or rural residence) face structural exclusion from services designed to protect them from market dependence. The article constructs its theoretical framework around Marshall's theory of social citizenship, O'Connor and Gough's class-based welfare state analyses, and Esping-Andersen's decommodification typology. The analytical originality of the concept is demonstrated through systematic differentiation from the digital divide, digital stratification, and conditionality literatures. Four operational criteria are proposed for empirical identification of the prerequisite, alongside institutional design principles to address the mechanisms through which tacit re-commodification operates. The Turkish welfare context illustrates how digitalization interacts with a structurally limited decommodification capacity.

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