The reforms of the social and employment services that have swept across most of the developed world since the 1990s have enormously expanded the groups of citizens receiving active employment measures. Nevertheless, up until now, most countries have only seen limited results from enhancing the labour market participation of the most vulnerable groups. We argue that the goal of including a greater share of the harder-to-place unemployed in the labour market is not likely to be achieved through the tried and tested ways of developing knowledge, policy and practice. Rather, we propose a different approach to generating and exchanging the necessary knowledge for developing active employment policy and practice. As an alternative to the evidence-based knowledge paradigm, we set up a model for knowledge production that is made through co-operation between practice and research. This model investigates the potential for integrated services and for co-production by acknowledging the importance of the experiences of frontline professionals and clients in developing employment services.
In recent years, evaluation research has taken an increasing interest in the proliferation of evaluation systems. One of the main assumptions being that such evaluation systems can enhance the use of evaluations and their findings. The current article analyses this assumption by empirically studying the workings of a specific evaluation system within the Danish Ministry of Employment. By applying the concept of constitutive effects, the article analyses how the evaluation system affects processes of policymaking within the central government. It is shown how the institutionalisation of an evidence-based evaluation system, at the ministerial level, structures the process of policymaking around a specific understanding of policy content, timeframes and expertise. Based on these findings, it is argued that evaluation systems can both enhance the instrumental use of evaluations and significantly alter policymaking processes.
For several decades, the social investment (SI) state has been heralded as the saviour of the welfare state, while at the same time being criticised for being just another instance of neoliberal downsizing of the welfare state. Recently, efforts have been made to provide clearer conceptualisations of how to assess the existence and impact of SI. However, these attempts have hitherto mainly focused on the policy functions and instruments of the SI state. This article contributes to existing research by offering a novel analytical framework on the capacity needed by street-level organisations (SLOs) to implement the central policy functions of the SI state, and by elucidating how administrative reforms influence this capacity. The article applies the framework to the implementation in Denmark of Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) in local job centres. This case is considered an SI ‘flagship’ in terms of formal policies, while also having undergone multiple administrative reforms, which makes it highly illustrative for the central argument of the article – that the success or failure of an SI approach is not only determined by politics and formal policies. The empirical analysis reveals how the capacity to implement SI policies has been enhanced by administrative reforms; this has been done by giving job centres more room for discretion and enhancing their ability to make long-term investments and to promote integrated service provision across different service areas. However, at the same time the local job centres remain closely monitored and controlled through an external accountability performance measurement system.
Stort set alle grupper af offentligt forsørgede har i dag ret og pligt til en aktiv beskæftigelsesindsats. Men er det muligt at forfølge dette beskæftigelsespolitiske rationale for de mest udsatte målgrupper af ledige, som ofte har mange andre udfordringer end alene manglende beskæftigelse? Det er temaet for denne artikel, som med afsæt i både en historisk og aktuel analyse, oplister nogle af de dilemmaer kommunerne står over for, når de skal få en beskæftigelses- og virksomhedsrettet indsats til også at omfatte en stadig større målgruppe af udsatte borgere blandt kontant- og uddannelseshjælpsmodtagerne. Analysen viser, at det er blevet stadig sværere at opretholde den disciplinerende beskæftigelsespolitiske linje, som ellers kontinuerligt er blevet skærpet fra centralpolitisk hold gennem de sidste 15-20 år. Der er dog ikke tale om en tilbagevenden til tidligere tiders socialpolitiske indsats, da beskæftigelsessigtet for alle målgrupper i dag står helt centralt i jobcentrenes problemforståelse og tilgang.
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