Marketization and Varieties of Accountability Relationships in Employment Services: Comparing Denmark, Germany, and Great Britain

Abstract

In the past decade, European countries have contracted out public employment service functions to "activate" working-age benefit clients. There has been limited discussion of how contracting out shapes the accountability of employment services or is shaped by alternative democratic, administrative, or network forms of accountability. This article examines employment service accountability in Germany, Denmark, and Great Britain. We find that market accountability instruments are additional instruments, not replacements. The findings highlight the importance of administrative and political instruments in legitimizing marketized service provision and shed light on the processes that lead to the development of a hybrid accountability model.

Rescaling employment support accountability: From negative national neoliberalism to positively integrated city-region ecosystems

“…Hence, and stepping back from the paper's specific focus for a moment, we support the need to move beyond analytically over-simplistic depictions of employment support systems in terms of singular accountability dimensions and to progress instead towards far greater attention to accountability hybridity within these complex systems (Jantz et al, 2015). More fully, however, we argue that the required sensitivity to accountability hybridity must incorporate not only the constellations of, and interactions between, different accountability dimensions but, critically, must also include sensitivity to the distinct conceptual forms that those dimensions can take as well as the related spatial scales at which they do, can, and (in terms of their effectiveness) ought to operate.…”

“…Building on the broader employment support governance literature (Considine, 2001;Newman, 2001), as well as that limited literature which does focus specifically on accountability mechanisms in employment support (Jantz et al, 2015), five heuristic approaches to understanding accountability mechanisms within the field of employment support are identifiable -procedural, corporate, market, network and democratic. These can be summarised as follows:…”

“…Whilst Jantz et al (2015) focus 'top-down' on the accountability of politicians though the electoral cycle, we would also include possible 'bottom-up' democratic accountability through user experience via levers of 'voice' (e.g. feedback, complaints, service rating) and 'choice' (e.g.…”

Insertionas an alternative to workfare: Active labour-market schemes in the Parisian suburbs

“…In extreme cases, providers are paid mainly or entirely by results, as in Britain's Work Programme and Germany's placement vouchers. Jantz et al (2015) classify such arrangements as 'market accountability', where principles of competition, contracts, and performance dominate. An effective service is one that delivers large numbers of job placements, as defined in contracts between funder and provider.…”

“…shows that there will be very different providers operating under 'network accountability' from those operating under 'market accountability' (Jantz et al, 2015). Under the former, staff pursue…”