Responses from the Frontline: How Organisations and Street-Level Bureaucrats Deal with Economic Sanctions

Abstract

Economic sanctions have gained more political legitimacy and are being more widely used as a tool to improve the willingness of unemployed welfare recipients to participate in activities within the framework of active labour market policy (ALMP). Th e focus of this article is the use of economic sanctions on cash benefi t recipients in Denmark. Quantitative analyses show a substantial increase in the use of economic sanctions in Denmark, including sanctions on those who are categorised as having problems in addition to unemployment. In this article we will direct our attention to responses from both the organisational and individual level regarding the implementation of sanctions. Empirical material consists of interviews with managers and frontline social workers in municipalities with a high number of sanctions. We argue that organisations matter in shaping street-level behaviour, resulting in substantial diff erences in the use of sanctions from one municipality to another.

Practices of activation in frontline interactions: Coercion, persuasion, and the role of trust in activation policies in Germany

“…These coercive elements of activation policies have received broad attention in the corresponding research. In particular, sanctioning practices have been a focal point in welfare‐state research, both in the German (e.g., Grüttner, Moczall, & Wolff, ; Zahradnik et al, ) as well as in other institutional contexts (Caswell & Høybye‐Mortensen, ; Soss, Fording, & Schram, ). Studies that focus on support and counseling, on the other hand, are far less frequent and knowledge is still patchy (Caswell et al, , p. 182).…”

Punitive benefit sanctions, welfare conditionality, and the social abuse of unemployed people in Britain: Transforming claimants into offenders?

“…Wheelock, Wald, & Shchukin, (, p. 1) show that in the United States, “racial attitudes seemingly link support for punitive approaches to opposition to welfare expenditure.” In welfare settings ranging from work‐first English‐speaking systems to human‐capital Nordic regimes, sanction rates are influenced by external pressures like targets and benchmarking and local organisational practices, with limited caseworker discretion at street level (ibid. ; Caswell & Høybye‐Mortensen, ; Lens, ). Lens (, p. 573) shows that “sanctions were based primarily on attendance records and became a paper‐processing function”; interaction between claimants and advisers was “routinized and mechanical, resulting in improper and arbitrary sanctions.”…”

Frontline managers' perceptions and justifications of behavioural conditionality

“…Hence, how these managers perceive, interpret, and justify welfare policies have arguably major implications for frontline practices. In a similar vein, it has been argued that organisations and management matter in shaping street-level behaviour (Caswell & Høybye-Mortensen, 2015).…”