Episodes of Translation and Network Resilience: Lessons from Israel's Attempted Institutionalisation of Workfare

Abstract

The translation perspective explores the travel of policy ideas, programmes and practices across international boundaries, focusing on the process through which interpretative agents introduce and adjust borrowed policy items to a new policy context. Current research emphasises the significance of local networks’ support for translation's efficacy. However, we know little about how such networks are maintained and stabilized over time or how changing configurations and capacities may affect translation's prospects. This paper explores the case of Israel's attempted institutionalisation of workfare – an enduring international policy fashion – from 1998 to the present day. We follow the stabilization and destabilization of the local translation network across different levels and sites of policy design and implementation, analysing emerging conflicts and agreements at each site. We use the metaphor ‘episodes of translation’ to explore translation's value as a concept accounting for local policy change. In order for translation-led policy change to maintain legitimacy and actualisation in contested domains, ongoing engagement of existing and emerging policy actors is essential. This case demonstrates how when networks become destabilized, translation-led policy change may come to a halt.

Translating social investment ideas in Israel: Economized social policy’s competing agendas

“…The institutionalization of translated ideas depends on establishing supportive networks and coalitions (Helman and Maron, 2019). This proves profoundly challenging for SI policies which, unlike postwar welfare state policies, often fail to attract and establish supportive alliances.…”

“…Based on their membership in transnational professional networks and ongoing interaction with IOs, national economists are primary agents in the dissemination and translation of international economic policy ideas (Ban, 2016; Chwieroth, 2007). By mediating domestic and international policy fields, economists in central state units are able to effect economic and social policymaking (Helman and Maron, 2019; Maman and Rosenhek, 2008).…”

“…Economists participate in processes of interpretation and translation, whereby social actors adjust and modify foreign ideas to suit local circumstances, which include policy experiences and institutional arrangements. Via translation, foreign SI ideas may take on new local meanings and become associated with particular national policy legacies (Ban, 2016; Helman and Maron, 2019; Lendvai and Stubbs, 2009). The polysemic nature of SI ideas leaves ample room for interpretation and translation into actual policy proposals and agendas (Jenson, 2010).…”

Economizing the political: Workfare reform in strategic management mode

“…After a severe economic crisis in the early 1990s, established Keynesian policies and ideals were problematized and replaced with Schumpeterian supply-side strategies through which the Finnish economy and labour force were reimagined and recalibrated in terms of market efficiency and competitiveness. In this context, and following ‘an enduring international policy fashion’ (Helman and Maron, 2019), workfare policies began to be rolled out. In Finland throughout the twenty-first century the critique of welfare state structures by policy elites and key state institutions such as the Ministry of Finance has intensified.…”

“…The opening out of public employment services to private actors has previously drawn scholarly attention especially for pioneer countries such as Australia and the Netherlands (Bredgaard and Larsen, 2007; van Berkel, 2014). Our analysis of the Finnish case allows us to reflect on how policy ideas and reform ‘travel’ as well as on context-specific attempts at implementation (see Helman and Maron, 2019).…”