THE WELFARE STATE: A REGULATORY PERSPECTIVE

The role of regulation and the regulatory state in social policy, redistribution, and the reforms of the welfare state are increasingly important but often underestimated and misunderstood. These problems are evident in Majone's highly influential work where the regulatory state and the ‘positive’ state stand as two alternative monomorphic forms of state. This article offers a polymorphic alternative where the regulatory state may come to the rescue of the welfare state, allowing independent extension, retrenchment, and stagnation of welfare via social regulation. The article extends a regulatory governance perspective into the core of the welfare state, clarifies the relations between fiscal and regulatory instruments, and demonstrates that the boundaries of the regulatory state are wider than are usually understood. It turns our understanding of the welfare state on its head, highlighting first the less visible regulatory layer, and then the more visible layer of fiscal transfers.     

Beyond social regulation? New instruments and/or a new agenda for social policy at Lisbon?

The consistent failure to match EU market integration with social policies provoked the development of new modes of European governance for welfare provision in the early 1990s. Based on policy co-ordination rather than integration, these new governance modes were consolidated as the 'Open Method of Co-ordination' (OMC) at the Lisbon Summit in 2000. This article analyses the scope and limits of the OMC, locating it in the context of broader trends and tendencies in governance and social provision. Indeed, the perceived 'success' of the OMC may reflect a deeper trend in social policy across western Europe and beyond, towards 'active' welfare policies. In many ways the OMC is consistent with the influential 'regulatory state' vision of the EU. Yet by 'activating' welfare the OMC may challenge market liberal theories of European economic regulation. The first seeks to integrate economic and social policies while the latter is premised on their separation.     

Reinventing Governance for Performance in South Asia: Impacts on Citizenship Rights

Abstract

In line with the global trend of “reinventing governance” based on market‐driven policies and structures, South Asian countries have adopted some major reforms in governance during the recent two decades. While this market‐led shift in governance is largely intended to enhance its performance in terms of greater efficiency and quality, there is a tendency to overlook its implications for the rights and entitlements of citizens in these countries. The article examines the basic tenets or features of this transition in governance, encompassing the replacement of public sector by private sector and the transformation of public management based on business principles. The main objective, however, is to examine the critical impacts of this new mode of governance on the political and social rights of citizens in South Asia. The article concludes by stressing the need for paying adequate attention to citizenship rights in pursuing such reforms in governance.     

New directions in welfare: rights-based social policies in post-neoliberal Latin America

What happens to the politics of welfare in the Global South when neoliberal values are questioned? How is welfare re-imagined and re-enacted when governments seek to introduce progressive change? Latin America provides an illustration and a valuable entry point to debates about ‘interruptions’ of neoliberalism and the changing nature of social policy. Drawing on examples of disability policies in Ecuador and care provision in Uruguay, we argue that there is a ‘rights turn’ in welfare provision under the left that reflects a recognition that previous welfare models left too many people out, ethically and politically, as well as efforts to embed welfare more centrally in new patterns of respect for socio-economic and identity-based human rights. Given Latin America’s recent contestation of neoliberal development as well as its history of sometimes dramatic welfare shifts, the emergence of rights-based social provision is significant not just for the region but also in relation to global struggles for more equitable governance.     

Reforming New Zealand's health care system

In common with many OECD countries, New Zealand has been engaged in a process of reforming the nation's health care system. In New Zealand's case the reforms have been particularly far reaching and effected within a remarkably short time frame. In 1991 the policy framework was made public, and the legislation to underpin the changes enacted in 1993. Shadow bureaucracies anticipating the reforms were set up as early as 1991, however, thus allowing for the changes to be effected in advance of legislation. Thus in the space of a few years, the social security model of health care, which had been in place for over half a century, was transformed into a system characterised by managed competition. This article begins by briefly describing the social security model of health care, and its inherent problems. I go on to analyze the reforms, focusing on the problems of the previous system that the reforms were intended to address. The major planks of the new system are identified, namely the separation of purchasing of health services from provision and creating a competitive market; the distinction between “personal” and “population” health services; establishment of a core of services to which all citizens are entitled; and the integration and capping of funding for health services, and increasing cost-sharing. Of these policies, only the separation of purchasing and provision of health care and the integration of funding for health services have to date been fully implemented, the remainder having been delayed, modified or abandoned. The health care system has arguably been only partially reformed, therefore.     

THE INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF POLITICAL DISCRETION IN POST‐COMMUNIST CIVIL SERVICE SYSTEMS: THE CASE OF HUNGARY

This article addresses the discrepancy between attempts to establish professional, de‐politicized civil services and the politicization of personnel policy at the central government level of post‐communist countries. It develops the concept of formal political discretion as an analytical tool for the assessment of how and to what extent legislative frameworks governing civil services provide institutional conditions for the de‐politicization of personnel policy. The case of Hungary shows that since the change of regime in 1989/90, four civil service reforms have led to the adoption, implementation and revision of civil service legislation that has gradually reduced the possibilities for government ministers to exercise political discretion over personnel policy. Civil service reforms have also led to the institutionalization of various discretionary instruments which ministers can and have used to politicize civil service affairs. The adoption and implementation of civil service laws therefore does not necessarily lead to the de‐politicization of civil services.     

THE GOVERNANCE OF FINANCIAL REGULATORY REFORM: THE AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCE

The dominant perspective in the literature linking governance, globalization and public policy argues that globalization undercuts state capacity, weakening a government's ability to effectively regulate its domestic affairs. This paper shows otherwise with special reference to the Australian experience in financial regulation. It challenges the conventional wisdom that the Australian state is weak and cannot adopt anticipatory industrial policies. This paper argues that the adoption of the ‘twin peaks' model of financial regulatory arrangements is an example of the existence of government‐led steering in Australia which can adopt a proactive approach to financial regulation by steering and coordinating policy networks. ‘Governance through hierarchy’ in the financial services industry may be a function of the government's political entrepreneurship; its skill in setting and implementing an agenda; and an ability to create new policy communities and networks.     

IMPLEMENTING WELFARE REFORM IN MICHIGAN: THE ROLE OF STREET-LEVEL BUREAUCRATS[1]

ABSTRACT

This study examines the implementation of welfare reform policies enacted by the state of Michigan. In particular, it focuses on how welfare policy is altered as it devolves from state policy makers to street-level bureaucrats in three local welfare agencies in Michigan. The analysis reveals that street-level bureaucrats in local welfare offices are in a position to interpret broadly stated goals handed down from officials, and, in some cases, to manage and greatly influence the delivery of services when messages are mixed. The study also suggests that the actual policies or services delivered by front-line workers in welfare offices do not completely correspond with the policy directives issued by state officials.     

THE CENTRE STRIKES BACK: META‐GOVERNANCE,DELEGATION, AND THE CORE EXECUTIVE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, 2010–14

A growing literature on ‘agencification’, ‘quangocratization’, and the ‘autonomization’ of the state has highlighted a coordination dilemma in contemporary public governance whereby governments rely on delegated governance but are frustrated by the lack of control that arises from such structures. In the run‐up to the 2010 General Election in the United Kingdom this coordination dilemma was prominent as the capacity of the Cabinet Office to exert control over arm's‐length bodies, either directly or indirectly, received intense criticism. This article presents the findings of the first detailed research project to examine the subsequent Coalition Government's approach to this dilemma. It argues that in relation to the governance of public bodies, the role and capacity of the Cabinet Office has been transformed. In mapping this development the article explores the implications of the centre striking back in the context of ‘post‐New Public Management’ reforms.     

ONE‐STOP SHOPS FOR SOCIAL WELFARE: THE ADAPTATION OF AN ORGANIZATIONAL FORM IN THREE COUNTRIES

In recent years welfare services in Western Europe have been criticized for poor coordination. In response, ‘seamlessness’ has emerged as a vision for public administration with ‘one‐stop shops' viewed as means to reach this. This article conceptualizes the one‐stop shop and presents a three country case study to examine its drivers and its adaptation. In all countries the reforms meant mergers driven by hopes for a single entrance to services as well as proximity to citizens. However, the analysis of task portfolios, participant structure, instruments and autonomy reveal important variations in the adaptations. The specific configurations of one‐stop shops that emerged were partially a product of compromises and negotiations influenced by the political and performance priorities of central government. The classical trade‐off between specialization and coordination persists, but by offering users ICT‐based services one can to some extent maintain specialization behind the frontline and still provide services that are coordinated from a user perspective.     

Welfare as Warfare: How Violent Non-State Groups Use Social Services to Attack the State

Several violent non-state groups also administer social services. Although earlier works stress the effects of social service provision on support and sympathy for violent groups, this article emphasizes a broader challenge. Namely, social welfare organizations threaten to rob the state of the legitimacy it derives through the social contract. Abolishing these organizations can cause humanitarian crises, radicalize populations, and erode domestic and international policy support. Ignoring them invites the continued erosion of state power. The way out of this dilemma is through a strategy of “displacement,” whereby the state eradicates non-state social services while concurrently extending its own welfare capacity.     

Friends or Foes? Nonstate Public Goods Providers and Local State Authorities in Nondemocratic and Transitional Systems

Ordinary citizens often welcome nonstate provision of public goods and social welfare, but government officials, particularly in nondemocratic and transitional systems, may view nonstate actors as political competitors. Drawing on a combination of qualitative and quantitative data from rural China, this paper finds that some kinds of nonstate participation in public goods and social welfare provision can actually make local officials more optimistic about their ability to implement state policies and elicit citizen compliance. Local officials often believe that coproduction of public goods and services with community groups in particular, often with community actors taking the lead, can build trust and social capital that can spill over into increased citizen compliance with state demands, a central element of state capacity. Simply increasing levels of public goods provision, however, is not associated positively with optimistic perceptions of local state authority and capacity. Moreover, other forms of nonstate participation such as coproduction between private businesses and local officials or substitutive provision by nonstate actors have less potential for building trust between officials and citizens and are not seen by officials as beneficial for increasing citizen compliance.     

Co‐production as a route to employability: Lessons from services with lone parents

Policy‐makers claim to support personalized approaches to improving the employability of disadvantaged groups. Yet, in liberal welfare states, mainstream activation programmes targeting these groups often deliver standardized, low‐quality services. Such failures may be related to a governance and management regime that uses tightly defined contracting and performance targets to incentivize (mainly for‐profit) service providers to move people into any job as quickly as possible. This article draws on evidence from third sector/public sector‐led services in Scotland to discuss an alternative approach. These services co‐produced personalized support in partnership with disadvantaged service users (in this case vulnerable lone parents). We suggest that, in this case, street‐level co‐production and personalization were facilitated by co‐governance and co‐management in the design and organization of provision. We conclude by identifying lessons for future employability services.     

THE DIFFICULT TRANSFORMATION OF STATE AND PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION IN PORTUGAL. EUROPEANIZATION AND THE PERSISTENCE OF NEO‐PATRIMONIALISM

Portugal has been characterized by a late discontinuous democratization process. This contribution discusses the case of state and public administration reform in Portugal by using approaches from democratization, modernization and Europeanization theories. In order to understand the Portuguese case, the concept of ‘neo‐patrimonialism’ is used. We characterize Portuguese public administration as still having ‘neo‐patrimonial’ features, and therefore is still in transition from old closed‐minded practices such as particularistic decision making or clientelistic relationships to new open‐minded ones. The ‘new’ governance agenda combines new public management instruments and a growing flexibilization of public administration towards networks with non‐statal actors and has certainly led to some improvement in the quality of the services associated with public administration. Although is still too early to assess, top‐down and horizontal Europeanization processes, particularly since the late 1990s, may have contributed to a more reflexive approach in moving towards a more endogenous strategic vision based on the needs of the Portuguese state and public administration.     

Is the Chinese ‘entrepreneurial welfare state’ an industrial policy in disguise?

Abstract

What has driven China, a developing country that has only recently saved itself from nationwide poverty, to increase its investment in social welfare so rapidly and extensively in the past decade? Drawing on extensive field research in a prefecture-level district in southwest China between 2014 and 2017, the authors argue in this article that local governments in China provide welfare housing programmes as a veil for developmentalist industrial policies aimed at industrial upgrading and the improvement of dynamic efficiency. The article demonstrates the unique incentive structure behind the local Chinese governments’ role as the front-line investor in social welfare benefits, and how the local state has cunningly used the façade of welfare provision to (1) divert the earmarked budget to implement development-oriented industrial policy; and (2) fake a discursive congruence between the heavily interventionist local practice and the overall neoliberal central-level policy discourse that features deregulation, small government and a laissez-faire developmental pathway. Exploring this set of strategic dynamics underlining the manoeuvres of the Chinese welfare operation helps us understand the variability of welfare state forms and trajectories of developmental strategy in the Global South.     

Towards developing new partnerships in public services: users as consumers, citizens and/or co-producers in health and social care in England and Sweden

The causes and effects of marketization of public services have been analysed extensively in the literature, but there is relatively little research on how those policies impact on the development of new forms of governance, and the role of users in these new arrangements. This study reviews examples of competition, freedom of choice and personalized care in health and social services in England and Sweden, in order to examine the type of relationships emerging between the user/consumer vis-à-vis market driven providers and various agencies of the state under the marketized welfare. The article focuses on the possible roles users might assume in new hybrid arrangements between markets, collaborations and steering. A user typology: namely, that of a consumer, citizen, co-producer and responsibilized agent in various governance arrangements, is then suggested. The article concludes by arguing that pro-market policies instead of meeting the alleged needs of post-modern users for individualized public services are likely to promote a new type of highly volatile and fragile partnerships, and create a new subordinated user who has no choice but to ‘choose’ services they have little control over.     

DOCTORS AND DEFICITS: REGULATING THE MEDICAL PROFESSION IN FRANCE

This paper seeks to analyze the political factors involved in health care delivery in a modern industrial welfare state and to illustrate how the transformation of the French state has affected the policymaking environment surrounding this particular issue. Cultural traditions rooted in the nineteenth century seriously circumscribed the role of the state in de-the conditions of medical practice. Nonetheless, pressures emerging since 1945 for the provision of a wide array of social services have drawn the state into ever closer regulation of the health sector. The economic constraints of the past decade resulted in state-imposed cost-containment policies which accentuated the trend toward politicization of health care. In consequence, and despite the rear-guard defensive tactics of the medical profession, the French state has succeeded in firmly establishing its primacy in this major area of public policy.     

THE ROLE OF STATE‐REINFORCED SELF‐GOVERNANCE IN AVERTING THE TRAGEDY OF THE IRRIGATION COMMONS IN JAPAN

The scholarly works on governance alternatives are peppered with arguments suggesting that, to avert the tragedy of the commons, the state should coerce resource users to manage the commons; take authoritarian ownership of it; privatize it; co‐manage it with users, or, since the state may also destroy self‐governing institutions of users, stay away so that users can develop self‐governing institutions for management. This article examines the management of the irrigation commons in post‐war Japan and explores a unique policy alternative termed ‘state‐reinforced self‐governance’. It allows a financially, technologically, statutorily, and politically strong state to assist strategically, rather than coerce, users to self‐govern and avert the tragedy of the commons.     

CHARACTERIZING NEW LABOUR: THE CASE OF THE CHILD TRUST FUND

The UK Child Trust Fund (CTF), which came into effect in January 2005, appears to be an exemplary instance of ‘asset‐based welfare’, of the redistribution of wealth rather than simply income. However, this article shows that over the course of its development, and in its final implementation, CTF policy became ever more focused on generating a ‘savings culture’ and enhancing financial literacy. In explaining this outcome, it is argued that it may be characteristic of New Labour for which, it is further argued, welfare policy should seek to push individual aspirations and outlooks in certain directions. The article takes an interpretive approach to the study of policy and politics, arguing that we should look carefully at the processes of argument and selection by which ‘objects’ of policy are specified. This can help us characterize the approach of varying administrations, their ‘governmentality’.     

Mixed Welfare Systems and Hybrid Organizations: Changes in the Governance and Provision of Social Services

Abstract

The provision and governance of personal social services is nowadays often thought as a matter of finding the right balance between market principles and state regulation. However often, personal social services depend as well from a third resource and mechanism of governance: It is the impact of the social capital of civil society, which makes itself felt not only by resources such as grants, donations, and volunteering, but as well by networking and social partnerships. A number of crucial changes in welfare and service provision have led to a situation, where service systems and service units, rather than being part of a clear-cut sector, have increasingly to be seen as hybrids, combining varying balances of resources and mixes of governance principles usually associated with the market, the state, and the civil society.