My thesis is looking at the question: What explains Australia’s policy mix of social security benefits and mutual obligation conditions for the long-term unemployed? Over the last 30 years, recipients of working-age unemployment payments have been subject to increasingly paternalistic conditions and sanctions that attach behavioural requirements to receipt of payment, accompanied by a period of stasis in the rate of payments to recipients, which, in 2021, received its first substantive increase in 28 years. This thesis will focus on the role of institutional mechanisms in shaping developments in social security policies by analysing changes to unemployment policies, representation and administrative arrangements in Australian social security since 1983.