Case management has become a key technology in governing the problem of unemployment in western countries such as Britain, the United States and Australia. In this paper we argue that case management represents a radical localization of governance wherein the rights and responsibilities between unemployed people and the state are articulated primarily in the relationship between the case manager and his or her client. This paper reports on a study undertaken in Australia's Job Network system of employment services. Using a governmental analysis we show how the case management relationship is experienced by case managers and long-term unemployed people in a sample of nonprofit and for-profit Job Network agencies in two states of Australia. The research reveals the micro relations of power and authority that are invoked in the everyday politics of welfare reform. We argue that engaging in policy research at a local level of analysis acts as a necessary balance to more macro welfare state comparisons. Working within a 'street-level' approach illuminates how workfare policies and programmes are aligning social relations and identities with new welfare ends and means.

The paper explores recent developments in Australian and Danish unemployment policies with a special focus on the technologies used to classify and categorize unemployed people on government benefits. Using governmentality as our theoretical framework, we consider the implications of reducing complex social problems to statistical scores and differentiated categories — forms of knowledge that diminish the capacity to think about unemployment as a collective problem requiring collective solutions. What we argue is that classification systems, which are part and parcel of welfare state administration, are becoming more technocratic in the way in which they divide the population into different categories of risk.

This article presents illustrative findings from case study research investigating the function and effects of competing discourses in the policy change process. The specific field of research is the development and implementation of public housing policy in Queensland, Australia. Critical discourse analysis is used to explore discursive constructions of the policy problem and power relations within the policy community. It is argued that positivist approaches to policy analysis have failed to address the way in which policy language constructs welfare identities, legitimates policy interventions and functions as an important site of ideological struggle over the meaning of human services within the welfare state. These themes are discussed using semi-structured interview data and key policy documents collected during the course of research.

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