Work and the Welfare State: Street-Level Organizations and Workfare Politics (Public Management and Change)

"Work and the Welfare State places street-level organizations at the analytic center of welfare-state politics, policy, and management. This volume offers a critical examination of efforts to change the welfare state to a workfare state by looking at on-the-ground issues in six countries: the US, UK, Australia, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. An international group of scholars contribute organizational studies that shed new light on old debates about policies of workfare and activation. Peeling back the political rhetoric and technical policy jargon, these studies investigate what really goes on in the name of workfare and activation policies and what that means for the poor, unemployed, and marginalized populations subject to these policies. By adopting a street-level approach to welfare state research, Work and the Welfare State reveals the critical, yet largely hidden, role of governance and management reforms in the evolution of the global workfare project. It shows how these reforms have altered organizational arrangements and practices to emphasize workfare's harsher regulatory features and undermine its potentially enabling ones. As a major contribution to expanding the conceptualization of how organizations matter to policy and political transformation, this book will be of special interest to all public management and public policy scholars and students."--Publisher's description Cover Contents Preface PART I: INTRODUCTION Chapter 1 Work and the Welfare State Chapter 2 Street-Level Organizations and the Welfare State PART II: WHAT’S AT ISSUE: POLITICS, POLICIES, AND JOBS Chapter 3 The American Welfare State: Two Narratives Chapter 4 The Policies ofWorkfare: At the Boundaries betweenWork and the Welfare State Chapter 5 Double Jeopardy: The Misfit between Welfare-to-Work Requirements and Job Realities PART III: GOVERNANCE AND MANAGEMENT: WORKFARE’S ‘‘SECOND TRACK’’ Chapter 6 Triple Activation: Introducing Welfare-to-Work into Dutch Social Assistance Chapter 7 Active Labor Market Reform in Denmark: The Role of Governance in Policy Change Chapter 8 Performance Management as a Disciplinary Regime: Street-Level Organizations in a Neoliberal Era of Poverty Governance PART IV: STREET-LEVEL ORGANIZATIONS AND THE PRACTICES OF WORKFARE Chapter 9 Commodification, Inclusion, or What? Workfare in Everyday Organizational Life Chapter 10 Race, Respect, and Red Tape: Inside the Black Box of Racially Representative Bureaucracies Chapter 11 Good Intentions and Institutional Blindness: Migrant Populations and the Implementation of German Activation Policy Chapter 12 Frontline Workers as Intermediaries: The Changing Landscape of Disability and Employment Services in Australia PART V: ADMINISTRATIVE JUSTICE: CHALLENGING WORKFARE PRACTICES Chapter 13 Conditionality, Sanctions, and the Weakness of Redress Mechanisms in the British ‘‘New Deal’’ Chapter 14 Redress and Accountability in US Welfare Agencies PART VI: CONCLUSION Chapter 15 Work and the Welfare State Reconsidered: Street-Level Organizations and the Global Workfare Project References Contributors Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P R S T U V W Y Z Placing street-level organizations at the analytic center of welfare state politics, policy, and management, this volume offers a critical examination of efforts to change the welfare state to a workfare state by looking at on-the-ground issues in six countries. It is suitable for public management and public policy scholars and students.