Activation Policies, New Modes of Governance and the Issue of Responsibility

Abstract

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.

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

“…Moreover, the focus on targets often decreases the discretion for both service professionals and users to act. For professionals, it leaves less room to give attention to specific personal problems, or to invest in personal relations with users (Bonvin, 2008). It therefore also decreases the possibility to negotiate and discuss about uncertainties of co-production, increasing the chance that closed systems approaches will be adopted.…”

Nijmegen: Work Corporations—for the Unemployed, by the Unemployed

“…They attain these skills partly because they are required to work from the very start and partly because they are supervised and educated throughout the programme. Hence, the policy combines elements of "Work First" (Bruttel and Sol 2006) and more capability enhancing or empowering approaches (Bonvin 2008). Work corporations teach not only technical but also social skills.…”

Withdrawal from the public employment service by young unemployed: a matter of non-take-up or of non-compliance? How non-profit social work initiatives may inspire public services

“…However, the increasing emphasis on monitoring and sanctions and on managerial accountability by the use of performance targets seems to limit front line officials' autonomy (discretion). Several authors (Freedland & King, 2005;Bonvin, 2008) have warned of the danger of unequal treatment that may occur if front line officials are unable to invest sufficient time and effort in the support of each unemployed individual and in the collection of adequate information on the individual's efforts and capabilities.…”

“…In a similar line, other scholars point to the imbalance between the emphasis on the coercive side of activation (monitoring, sanctions) at the expense of investments in enabling, empowering services (e.g. Bonvin, 2008;Freedland & King, 2005). Malmberg-Heimonen & Vuori, 2005 show that such policy strategy may be counterproductive for enforced (in contrast to voluntary) participation in activation programmes is found to impair rather than improve the effect on self-efficacy of participants and to discourage rather than encourage.…”