The Provision of Income Protection and Activation Services for the Unemployed in ‘Active’ Welfare States. An International Comparison

Abstract

This article discusses reforms of the design of the organisational arena for policy implementation and service provision in European welfare states, focusing on the policy areas of income protection and activation. First, it discusses and compares recent reform programmes in four countries: the UK, Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands. The comparison shows that these reforms share some common characteristics: the establishment of one-stop agencies, decentralisation, the introduction of quasi-markets for the provision of activation services, a reduction of the role and influence of social partners and the use of new public management instruments in managing public agencies. Secondly, the article argues that these reforms are not merely reflecting new ways of thinking about organising the public sector and providing public services, but should also be interpreted as responses to policy administration and implementation problems arising in the process of making welfare states more activating.

Farewell to flexicurity? Austerity and labour policies in the European Union

“…There has also been much discussion of the extent to which social policies and institutions within EU member countries have changed over time (for a summary see Thelen 2015: 3-5). Of particular relevance to this paper is evidence that relates to countries associated with different 'welfare regimes' or 'varieties of capitalism' and which indicates that labour institutions have become weaker and policy makers more favourably inclined towards labour market deregulation and work-first employment policies (Author B 2014;Baccaro and Howell, 2015, Bruttel and Sol, 2006, Van Berkel, 2009 Meardi, 2014). More generally, a set of instruments has been created to strengthen the power of the European Commission and ECB to influence the social and economic policies of EU member states.…”

Conceptualising the active welfare subject: welfare reform in discourse, policy and lived experience

“…Conceptual insights have evolved in parallel with an international sweep of welfare reforms, which have increasingly sought to reduce entitlements and intensify conditionality by individualising responsibility and mandating behavioural change. The influence of the 'incentive paradigm' (van der Veen and Trommel, 1999) has been wide-ranging, affecting principles of governance and service delivery as well as policy design (van Berkel, 2010;Larsen and van Berkel, 2009). In the UK, successive governments have reinforced the goal of individual behaviour change.…”

User co-production of public service delivery: Effects on trust

“…Creaming is believed to be stimulated when fierce accountability measures are in place. The effective spending of resources on activation services is increasingly managed by the use of performance targets (Van Berkel, 2010). Thus, activation services are often evaluated on the basis of their capacity to increase labour market participation.…”

“…The more organizations depend on the efforts of their clients -which are difficult to control -the more motivation becomes important. Moreover, in practice, performance indicators and targets are nowadays widely used for monitoring the output of local service providers -not only within marketized arenas (Van Berkel, 2010). Consequently, within network governance too, selection could occur.…”

“…Increasingly, activation services are delivered by organizations that are at arms' length of (local) government, such as agencies, private companies or TSOs (Van Berkel, 2010). Here, we assume that users of public services also perceive the government to be responsible for the service, although this does not necessarily have to be the case (cf.…”