9 results
7 - Can street-level bureaucrats be nudged to increase effectiveness in welfare policy?
- Edited by Benjamin Ewert, Hochschule Fulda – University of Applied Sciences, Germany, Kathrin Loer, Hochschule Osnabrück, Germany, Eva Thomann, Universität Konstanz, Germany
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- Book:
- Beyond Nudge
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 28 March 2024
- Print publication:
- 15 December 2023, pp 127-148
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Summary
Introduction
Street-level bureaucrats (SLBs) (for example, welfare workers, police officers, educators) interact directly and on a regular basis with citizens, and exercise discretionary power when delivering public services (Lipsky, 1980; Maynard-Moody and Musheno, 2003). Such discretion at the frontline is requested to motivate civil servants to enforce policy rules (Tummers, 2011; Tummers and Bekkers, 2014; Thomann et al, 2018) and tailor their implementation decisions to local political contexts and individual circumstances (Lipsky, 1980; May and Winter, 2007). However, it may also lead to less desirable effects, such as gaps between the legislator’s intention and the way policy is delivered (Hupe and Buffat, 2014), or unequal treatment of citizens’ demands (Meyers et al, 1998; Pedersen et al, 2018; Thomann and Rapp, 2018). For instance, when implementing policy tools (for example, granting a disability benefit), frontline welfare workers may use their leeway to prioritise some citizens over others, and justify their discriminatory behaviour by arguing that some citizens (for example, those who are vulnerable, meritorious or worthy) deserve more help than others (Van Oorschot, 2000; Jilke and Tummers, 2018). Such ‘deservingness cues’ and behavioural decision biases are probably legitimised if they resonate with the personal preferences of SLBs (May and Winter, 2007; Dubois, 2010; Raaphorst and Van de Walle, 2018), their moral dispositions (Zacka, 2017), their professional norms (Evans and Harris, 2004), or if they reproduce dominant social stereotypes about different policy beneficiaries (for example, Harrits and Moller, 2014; Kallio and Kouvo, 2015; Einstein and Glick, 2017; Thomann and Rapp, 2018).
These factors also affect the way SLBs process the available information when assessing the policy beneficiaries. This is most likely to take place when they have to tackle highly complex and abundant information in a limited time frame (Brodkin, 2006; 2011; Keiser, 2009). SLBs then tend to develop their own filters to process information, based on personal values and experiences, ideology, adherence to agency goals, background, and so on (Wood and Vetlitz, 2007), thus mechanically focusing on specific pieces of information and neglecting the others. In some cases, such partial information processing may impede the consideration of relevant information and result in less effective decisions (Wood and Vetlitz, 2007). This eventually leads to a disjuncture between the targeted policy goals and the actual implementation practices (Hasenfeld, 2010).
Towards a Capability-Oriented Eco-Social Policy: Elements of a Normative Framework
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- Jean-Michel Bonvin, Francesco Laruffa
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- Journal:
- Social Policy and Society / Volume 21 / Issue 3 / July 2022
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 03 December 2021, pp. 484-495
- Print publication:
- July 2022
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In this article we explore the potential of the capability approach as a normative basis for eco-social policies. While the capability approach is often interpreted as a productivist or maximalist perspective, assuming the desirability of economic growth, we suggest another understanding, which explicitly problematises the suitability of economic growth and productive employment as means for enhancing capabilities. We argue that the capability approach allows rejecting the identification of social progress with economic growth and that it calls for democratically debating the meaning of wellbeing and quality of life. We analyse the implications of this conceptualisation for the design of welfare states.
5 - Social policies put to the test by the pandemic: food banks as an indicator of the inadequacies of contemporary labour markets and social policies
- Edited by Marco Pomati, Cardiff University, Andy Jolly, University of Wolverhampton, James Rees, University of Wolverhampton
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- Book:
- Social Policy Review 33
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 14 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 30 July 2021, pp 95-114
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Summary
Introduction
The COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing lockdown have shed light on structural and situational – that is, tied to the current economic crisis – insufficiencies of contemporary labour markets and social policies and their incapacity to reduce inequalities and prevent precariousness. In many countries, food banks and similar food distributions emerged very early in the crisis to support people whose living conditions had considerably worsened and were not, or not adequately, supported by existing labour markets and social policies. This took place particularly acutely in Geneva, Switzerland, where thousands of people had to queue to get food bags during the lockdown, bringing to light the largely unexpected existence of an important pocket of vulnerability and poverty in one of the richest cities in the world. This situation surprised policymakers, field actors and academics alike, and emphasised the need to collect more knowledge about this – until then widely invisible – population.
More broadly, understanding this situation requires questioning the relevance of the existing mechanisms of social protection, which rely on two main pillars in order to ensure people's welfare as far as possible: first, the labour market and the capacity to get an income from one's labour and make a living of one's own; and second, the welfare state and its ability to complement insufficient income or to compensate for absent income. Taken together, these two pillars are thought to be able to guarantee social inclusion and a decent standard of living for all members of society. The ongoing pandemic reveals the structural and situational inadequacies of both the labour market and the welfare state, and points to the conditions needed to overcome them. On the one hand, the labour market organises the matching of labour supply and demand; this is embedded in institutional rules such as labour law, collective labour agreements and labour contracts that aim at guaranteeing a minimum threshold of rights and working conditions when at work. The pandemic crisis has shed a harsh light on the number of people who do not enjoy such protection, as they are undeclared workers – that is, their employment is not declared to public authorities and they therefore do not pay contributions to social insurance or benefit from legal protection. For them, the labour contract is nothing but a private disembedded arrangement, the duration and terms of which depend largely upon the employer's goodwill. In such cases, social protection proves to be virtually non-existent.
4 - Disputing the economization and the de- politicization of ‘social’ investment in global social policy
- Edited by Christopher Deeming, University of Strathclyde
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- Book:
- The Struggle for Social Sustainability
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 14 April 2023
- Print publication:
- 28 April 2021, pp 73-88
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Summary
Introduction
Since the mid-1990s, a new vocabulary of the ‘social’ has appeared in global social policy discourses, involving concepts such as ‘social cohesion’, ‘social capital’, ‘social inclusion’ (reducing ‘social exclusion’) and ‘social economy’ (Graefe, 2006: 197; see for example Levitas, 1996; Fine, 1999; Jayasuriya, 2006). In particular, one of the most interesting developments in thinking about the ‘social’ in the 21st century is the emergence of the social investment perspective on welfare reform (Esping-Andersen, 2002; Jenson, 2010; Morel et al, 2012; Hemerijck, 2013, 2018; Deeming and Smyth, 2015). In global social policy discourses more generally, ‘social investment’ (SI) is now actively promoted by international organizations like the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank Group (WBG), as well as regional actors like the European Union (EU) and the European Commission (EC) and UN Regional Commissions like the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) (Mahon, 2010; Jenson, 2017; Deeming and Smyth, 2018). SI is fast becoming one of the most important frameworks for thinking about the ‘social’, but this worldwide development remains highly problematic.
The chapter is structured in four main sections. The first two sections summarise the problems with the SI perspective before introducing the capability approach (CA). The third section presents social policy as an essential precondition for an effective democracy. Finally, the fourth section explores the implications of treating welfare reform itself as a political–democratic matter. Throughout the chapter, the aim is to highlight the differences of this conception with the SI perspective on social policy.
The social investment perspective
The SI perspective emphasizes the positive contribution of social policy not only to human wellbeing (for example, through the reduction of poverty and social marginalization) but also to economic progress. Thus, in contrast to theories that see a trade-off between social and economic goals, SI attempts to reconcile them, making social equity go hand in hand with economic efficiency (Taylor-Gooby, 2008; Vandenbroucke et al, 2011: 5; Hemerijck, 2013: 134).
Despite its merits, the SI approach has been criticized for adopting an economic framework, with the risk of replacing debates on social values with the economic rationale (Nolan, 2013).
7 - Implementing Social Justice Within Activation Policies: The Contribution Of the Capability Approach
- Edited by Anja Eleveld, VU University Amsterdam, Thomas Kampen, Josien Arts
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- Book:
- Welfare to Work in Contemporary European Welfare States
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 10 March 2021
- Print publication:
- 29 January 2020, pp 139-162
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Introduction
Welfare to work (WTW) policies aim at bringing recipients of social policies back to the labour market as quickly as possible. Moving from a statutory view of rights, they follow a contractual vision of social entitlements (Handler, 2003) according to which no rights should be granted without corresponding duties being imposed on their beneficiaries. By the same token, they convey normative expectations about recipients that are required to comply with them in order to be entitled to benefits and services. As such, WTW policies include a normative view about how human beings are supposed to behave and what rights and duties are implied by membership in society (Gilbert, 2002). They are instruments combining capacitating (improving employability, providing work experience, and so on) and constraining elements (pushing people back to work through the use of more restrictive conditionality and financial penalties or incentives). This mix of empowerment and constraint takes various shapes with respect to the countries and target groups involved: Anglo-Saxon countries tend to give more emphasis to constraining elements (Peck and Theodore, 2000) while Scandinavian countries rather focus on the development of employability (Barbier, 2004).
Mixing restraint and empowerment raises complex issues in terms of social justice, which ought to be tackled not only at theoretical but also empirical level. This task requires extensive attention to implementation processes: that is, how a normative prescription contained in a legislative provision or an administrative directive translates into a specific practice and, of equal significance, how it is received by the beneficiaries concerned. Three categories of actors are thus involved in such processes: those that shape or design the policy (policy makers in parliamentary arenas, but also high-level civil servants in charge of designing specific directives for street-level bureaucrats), those responsible for the implementation of such policies and directives (mainly street-level bureaucrats in public administrations, but also in private and third-sector providers to whom such tasks are increasingly subcontracted), and the target groups that ‘receive’ such policies (beneficiaries, users, clients or ‘citizens-consumers’ as they are sometimes called). The claim of this chapter is that infringements of the principles of non-interference and non-domination can happen in different ways at all three levels: at design level, where specific normative contents may be imposed by majoritarian parties or by high-level civil servants on the other stakeholders of the policy process;
two - Education as investment? A comparison of the capability and social investment approaches to education policy
- Edited by Mara A. Yerkes, Universiteit Utrecht, Jana Javornik, University of Leeds, Anna Kurowska, Uniwersytet Warszawski Instytut Ameryk i Europy
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- Book:
- Social Policy and the Capability Approach
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 30 April 2022
- Print publication:
- 26 June 2019, pp 19-40
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Introduction
Social investment represents to date one of the most relevant normative frameworks to think about welfare reform in Europe (for example, Morel et al, 2012a; EC, 2013; Hemerijck, 2018), stressing the positive consequences of social policy in terms of both social and economic outcomes. Indeed, contributing to the health and education of the population, social policy not only improves people's quality of life but also enhances their productivity as workers, thus enhancing economic growth. Hence, one of the central aspects of the social investment strategy involves the focus on improving individuals’ human capital. Indeed, in some versions of social investment, the emphasis on investing in education is pushed so far that it is almost suggested that investments in education can replace social protection and redistribution policies (for a discussion and critique of these positions, see for example, Morel et al, 2012b; Solga, 2014; Deeming and Smyth, 2015). The argument is that once individuals have been equipped for the labour market, they no longer need other forms of social policy because they become self-sufficient and can look after themselves. At any rate, in contemporary debates education policy is considered a key area of social policy that concerns not only children and young people but also all people of working age (through retraining and lifelong learning).
In this chapter we compare the social investment and the capability approaches (CAs) to education policy. In order to understand the role of education policy in social investment we refer to the Communication Rethinking Education: Investing in Skills for Better Socio-economic Outcomes adopted by the European Commission in 2012 (EC, 2012) and cited in the ‘Social Investment Package’ adopted in 2013 (EC, 2013). This Communication suggests that the role of education policy is that of fostering the right skills for the flourishing of the economy. The consequence is that education is mainly interpreted as a means for improving young and older people's productivity as workers. To be sure, fostering people's employability is also a ‘social’ goal: it increases the chances that they can find a good (stable, well-paid, and so on) job in the labour market, thereby enhancing their wellbeing. However, focusing on employability, social investment marginalises other important roles of education: not only its intrinsic value but also its contribution to democratic citizenship through the formation of citizens (Lister, 2003).
Activation Policies, New Modes of Governance and the Issue of Responsibility
- Jean-Michel Bonvin
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- Journal:
- Social Policy and Society / Volume 7 / Issue 3 / July 2008
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 01 July 2008, pp. 367-377
- Print publication:
- July 2008
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Most activation policies are based on a simplistic conception of responsibility: behaving responsibly coincides with quickly reintegrating the labour market. Local welfare agents are called to push beneficiaries to actively endorse this goal. But the issue of responsibility is much more complex. Drawing on Sen's capability approach, this article suggests that responsibilisation of recipients requires both empowerment and granting them more real freedom of choice on the labour market. Against the present trend toward hypertrophying individual responsibility, it calls for a more equilibrated balance between individual and social responsibility. The objective is not to define an impracticable ideal of responsibility, but to provide a yardstick for assessing activation programmes.
three - A capability approach to individualised and tailor-made activation
- Edited by Rik van Berkel, Ben Valkenburg
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- Book:
- Making It Personal
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 22 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 28 February 2007, pp 45-66
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For a couple of decades, employment and social integration policies have undergone significant transformations. In order to grasp the theoretical and practical meaning of these evolutions, new analytical tools and normative frameworks are needed. This is the very task that we pursue in this chapter. In the first section, the main evolutions are identified as well as their consequences in terms of analytical tools. Indeed, the contemporary transformations imply that the key locus of social policies is the local agency where the beneficiaries are assessed (as to the legitimacy of their claim, their degree of employability, and so on) and where active labour market programmes are actually designed and implemented. Therefore, new analytical tools are to be found in order to theoretically and critically assess these new modes of governance. The second section paves the road in this direction, by advocating the relevance of the capability approach (Sen, 1985, 1992, 1993, 1999) in such a context. In contrast with an employability (or human capital) perspective, which remains to a large extent entrapped in a technocratic or centralised conception of social policy, the capability approach genuinely takes into consideration what is the true goal of social policy, that is, the well-being and capacity to act of the beneficiaries. The concluding section takes a more policy-oriented view and identifies the main challenges faced by contemporary social integration policies in a capability perspective.
Individualisation and situated public action
New patterns of public action
Since the early 1980s there has been a threefold evolution of social policies in the field of labour market integration and the struggle against unemployment, which is by now well documented:
• first, a shift from passive measures (that is, benefits provided on the basis either of citizenship or of previous payment record, without further behavioural requirements on behalf of the jobseeker) to active programmes, in which the benefit payment is conditional upon the appropriate behaviour of the recipient, especially concerning their efforts to get back to the labour market as quickly as possible. In the literature, this first shift is captured as the move from decommodification to recommodification, where social policies are subordinated to labour market objectives as illustrated by the current focus on employability;
• second, a move towards individual measures, implying the substitution of the standardised programmes of conventional social policies based on predefined categories of social risk by individualised tailor-made policies.
nine - Assessing the European Social Model against the capability approach
- Edited by Maria Jepsen, Amparo Serrano Pascual
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- Book:
- Unwrapping the European Social Model
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 15 January 2022
- Print publication:
- 12 July 2006, pp 213-232
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Introduction
The contemporary welfare state is undergoing a threefold transformation towards activation of recipients, individualisation or contractualisation of benefits, and territorialisation of modes of governance. Briefly stated, the very aim of the welfare state is tending to evolve from paying cash compensation to restoring acting capacity, mainly working and productive capacity; this in turn requires taking into account individual characteristics within the field of the intervention of the welfare state, by contrast with the conventional social programmes based on categories of risk; it also implies a decentralisation of the modes of operation in order to equip local welfare agents with the abilities to design tailor-made measures. These changes coincide with a redefinition of the assessment criteria used to determine what intervention of the welfare state is right and fair (substantial level) and what procedures ought to be mobilised (processual level). The new framework produces highly contrasted reactions, ranging from resistance to full endorsement, and it is implemented in quite diverse ways and at different paces according to the countries and categories of population concerned. The discussion surrounding the European Social Model (ESM) takes place against this background, and the purpose of this chapter is to assess the distinctive position taken and role played by the ESM in this evolution of the welfare state.
In order to grasp and assess the scope of these transformations, the conventional analyses of the welfare state, centred on statistical indicators and power–resource theories, are not, in our view, adequate. The procedural and reflexive turn of social policies cannot be captured by these tools: indicators are too static, and power–resource theories tend to rely on national-level data about political representation in Parliaments, which are unable to grasp the growing impact of local implementing agents within the course of the policy process. As a valid alternative, we suggest using the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen (for instance, 1992, 1999), which relies on distinguishing three dimensions: (a) the resources in possession of a person (goods or services); (b) their capability set or the extent to which they are really free to lead the life they have reason to value; (c) their functionings or the life they actually lead.