Quasi-Markets in Employment Policy: Do They Deliver on Promises?

Abstract

This article focuses on the contracting-out of Public Employments Services. Quasi-markets promise to deliver more efficient, effective and de-bureaucratised employment services. By comparing experiences from Holland, Australia and Denmark we investigate whether quasi-markets deliver on promises. Quasi-market models have difficulties in living up to the preconditions for a well-functioning market and political expectations. Efficiency gains and cost-savings are still largely unknown. Instead it is clear that quasi-markets create a new type of employment policy, and new conditions for governing the labour market and employment policy. Clouded in the ‘technical’ language of improved efficiency and effectiveness, such changes are often neglected and depoliticised.

Outcomes of a Freedom of Choice Reform in Community Mental Health Day Center Services

“…The changes that occurred were in a negative direction, which is in line with previous research on free choice systems (Bredgaard & Larsen, 2008;Finn, 2009;Perri6, 2003;Spall et al, 2005;Struyven & Steurs, 2005). The negative changes concerned decreased satisfaction with the services at the 15-month follow-up in the sample as a whole and a lower level of empowerment at the final follow-up in the more intensely studied subgroup.…”

“…Some studies indicate modest efficiency gains (Perri6, 2003;Struyven & Steurs, 2005) but the dominant pattern that emerges in the literature is an absence of progress and service models that have difficulties in living up to the preconditions for a well-functioning market and meeting the political expectations (Bredgaard & Larsen, 2008;Finn, 2009;Jolley et al, 2014;Perri6, 2003;Spall, McDonald, & Zetlin, 2005;Struyven & Steurs, 2005). Experiences among users of free choice market systems can even be strikingly negative in terms of perceived inadequate service supply and service cutbacks (Spall et al, 2005).…”

Integrationen och arbetets marknad: Hur jämställdhet, arbete och annat "svenskt" görs av arbetsförmedlare och privata aktörer

“…I stället innebär marknadssystemen ofta svå-righeter då aktörernas agerande kan ge oförutsedda konsekvenser. Aktörerna gör strategiska överväganden som ofta är svåra att förutse och det är svårt att utöva kontroll över utförarna (se bland andra Bredgaard & Larsen 2008, Brodkin 2013b, van Berkel & Borghi 2008. Svårighe-ter att samverka med olika aktörer är också ett tema som identifierats i handläggarnas berättelser.…”

Support for All in the UK Work Programme? Differential Payments, Same Old Problem

“…There have been significant shifts in the organization of services with the implementation of contracting out and the creation of quasi-markets to respond to the critiques of public choice theorists around claims of unresponsive 'bureaucratic' state institutions and, more recently, the desire to transfer risk away from government (Considine 2000;Bredgaard and Larsen 2008;Mythen et al 2012). These organizational reforms have been closely associated with the turns towards new managerialim and contractualism as well as shifts to 'new' governance modes involving changed relationships between the state, citizens and disadvantaged groups (Ramia and Carney 2000;Considine 2001;Struyven and Steurs 2005).…”