Rescaling Social Policies: Towards Multilevel

Transcript

Rescaling Social Policies: Towards Multilevel Governance in Europe
Public Policy and Social Welfare
A Series Edited by the European Centre
European Centre Vienna
Volume 38
Yuri Kazepov (Ed.)
Rescaling Social Policies:
Towards Multilevel
Governance in Europe
©
European Centre Vienna, 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of
the publisher.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978-1-4094-1021-8
Printed by Facultas Verlags- und Buchhandels AG, Vienna, Austria
To Matti Heikkilä (✝)
A good friend and a brilliant researcher
Table of Contents
Contents
List of Figures and Tables............................................................................... 11
The Rescaling Project and This Book ..........................................................15
Yuri Kazepov
Setting the Scene: Rescaling and Governance ......................................33
Chapter 1
Rescaling Social Policies towards Multilevel Governance in Europe:
Some Reflections on Processes at Stake and Actors Involved .................... 35
Yuri Kazepov
Part I: Towards Multilevel Governance
in Selected Policy Areas ........................................................73
The Changing Area of Labour Market Activation Policy..................73
Chapter 2
Activation and Rescaling: Interrelated Questions in Social Policy? .......... 75
Stefania Sabatinelli
Chapter 3
A Comparative Perspective on Labour Market Changes..........................103
Eduardo Barberis / Beat Baumann
Chapter 4
Actors, Scaling and Governance in Activation Policy ............................... 139
Vappu Karjalainen
7
The Changing Area of Social Assistance Policy ................................. 175
Chapter 5
Social Assistance Policy Models in Europe:
A Comparative Perspective ...........................................................................177
Eduardo Barberis / Stefania Sabatinelli / Annegret Bieri
Chapter 6
The Territorial Organisation of Social Assistance Schemes in Europe .... 203
Renate Minas / Einar Øverbye
Chapter 7
Actors and Governance Arrangements
in the Field of Social Assistance .................................................................... 241
Åke Bergmark / Renate Minas
8
The Changing Area of Long-Term Care for Older People ...............275
Chapter 8
Familiarisation and Regional Variation in Long-Term Care Provision.
A Comparative Perspective on Long-Term Care
for Older People in Europe ............................................................................277
Rahel Strohmeier Navarro Smith
Chapter 9
The Territorial Dimension of Long-Term Care for Older People ............. 313
Signy Irene Vabo
Chapter 10
Actors and Governance Arrangements
in Long-Term Care for Older People ...........................................................343
Signy Irene Vabo
Table of Contents
Part II: The Challenges of Multilevel Governance
Arrangements within Social Policies ...........................365
Chapter 11
Rescaling Processes in Europe: Convergence and
Divergence Patterns towards Multilevel Governance? ............................. 367
Eduardo Barberis / Åke Bergmark / Renate Minas
Chapter 12
The Coordination Challenge .........................................................................389
Einar Øverbye / Rahel Strohmeier Navarro Smith /
Vappu Karjalainen / Jürgen Stremlow
Chapter 13
Rescaling of Social Welfare Policies:
Lessons and Future Perspectives .................................................................. 415
Nicolette van Gestel / Jean-Michel Herbillon
Appendix......................................................................................................429
Methods and Contexts in the Study of Rescaling.......................................431
Eduardo Barberis
References.................................................................................................... 471
The Authors..................................................................................................... 499
9
List of Figures and Tables
Figures
Chapter 1
Figure 1:
Figure 2.a:
Figure 2.b:
Figure 2.c:
Figure 2.d:
Figure 2.e:
Figure 3:
Chapter 5
Figure 1:
Chapter 6
Figure 1:
Implicit and explicit rescaling ..................................................44
Local autonomy centrally framed: Finland 1990-2005 .......... 56
Centrally framed: France 1990-2005 ........................................58
Regionally framed: Switzerland 1990-2005 ............................58
Regionally framed: Italy 1990-2005..........................................60
Mixed in transition: Poland 1990-2005 ....................................62
The role of redistribution and family ......................................64
Responsibility of public actors for different
policy functions in social assistance ......................................193
Sub-national autonomy and central control
1990 and 2005 ............................................................................232
Chapter 11
Figure 1:
The role of central authorities, 1990-2005 ............................ 374
Figure 2:
The role of central authorities in the three
scalar regime types, 1990-2005 ...............................................374
Figure 3:
The role of mid-level authorities, 1990-2005 ........................377
Figure 4:
The role of mid-level authorities in the three
Figure 5:
The role of lower-level authorities, 1990-2005 ..................... 379
Figure 6:
The role of lower-level authorities in the three
11
Appendix
Figure 1:
NUTS-3 level areas where field research
has been carried out .................................................................445
Tables
Chapter 1
Table 1:
Table 2:
Table 3:
Table 4:
Table 5:
12
Chapter 3
Table 1:
Table 2:
Table 3:
Table 4:
Table 5:
Table 6:
Table 7:
Table 8:
Table 9:
Table 10:
Table 11:
Financial decentralization in selected
European countries, 1974-2000 ................................................46
The welfare systems in Europe, 1990-2007 ............................. 54
Third sector actors’ involvement models
in European welfare systems ................................................... 65
Dispersion rates of selected indicators
at NUTS 2 level, 1999-2007 .......................................................68
Trends in Gini coefficients of income inequality
in selected OECD countries, 1985-2005 ................................... 70
Labour market indicators, 1985-2005 ....................................105
Labour market indicators (labour arrangements),
1985-2005 ...................................................................................107
Access to unemployment benefits for a middle-aged
redundant and unskilled factory worker (Mr. A) ................ 112
Net replacement rates – initial phase of unemployment:
single-earner married couple, no children
(profile Mr. A-like). Years 2005, 2006, 2007 ........................... 114
Access to benefits in case of unemployment, 2007 ............. 115
Participant stocks on labour market policies as a
percentage of the labour force – Out-of-work income
maintenance and support per measure (2000-2005)............ 119
Expenditure on Labour Market Policies / LMP (2005) ....... 121
Public expenditure and participant stocks on LMP
per programme (2007) ............................................................. 122
Area of application, financing source and institution
responsible for labour market policy training measures,
EU (2003) in % ........................................................................... 124
Participation rate in education and training (2007) .............125
Summary of labour markets and labour market policies ...135
Chapter 4
Table 1:
Table 2:
Table 5:
Table 6:
Governance types .....................................................................147
Main public actors of activation policy at
state, regional, provincial and local level ............................. 150
Responsibilities for various phases of activation policy
at different territorial levels .................................................... 153
Vertical coordination in activation policy
from the point of view of jurisdiction....................................156
Horizontal coordination of activation policy .......................161
Synoptic view of governance in activation policy ...............170
Chapter 5
Table 1:
Table 2:
Type of actors and their relevance ......................................... 195
Cash benefits for vignette cases in social assistance............ 202
Table 3:
Table 4:
Chapter 6
Table 1:
Table 2:
Legislative and planning power responsibilities ................. 216
Levels of administrative power and changes
over time (1990-2005) ...............................................................224
Table 3:
Financial power ........................................................................231
Appendix: The dimensions of sub-national autonomy and control ..... 236
Appendix: Sub-national autonomy ........................................................... 238
Appendix: Central control ......................................................................... 239
Chapter 7
Table 1:
Table 2:
Table 3:
Table 4:
Chapter 8
Table 1:
Table 2:
Table 3:
Table 4:
Table 5:
Social assistance: actors at different levels
and their pivotal tasks ............................................................. 243
Degrees of targeting, fragmentation and coordination.......250
Purpose of partnerships, who is involved,
structure of partnerships .........................................................256
Professional discretion – general overview ..........................266
Type of long-term care delivered to older people:
in-kind versus cash benefits ....................................................285
National coverage rates for long-term care for
older people: in-kind and cash benefits ................................287
Comparing cash benefits for dependent older people........289
Regional coverage rates for home care
and residential care .................................................................. 294
Public expenditure on long-term care
for older people (2005) .............................................................297
13
Table 6:
Table 7:
Table 8:
Chapter 9
Table 1:
Table 2:
Table 3:
Table 4:
14
Table 5:
Table 6:
Co-payment by users of long-term care
and their relatives ..................................................................... 299
Formal entitlements to long-term care for older people ..... 303
Social rights and professional guidelines of LTC
for older people ........................................................................306
Public strategies for care provision, home care
and home help to older people...............................................318
Territorial levels with main administrative responsibility
for the provision of long-term care services
for older people, 2006 ..............................................................320
Regulatory power over long-term care services
for older people at different territorial levels, 2006 .............323
Role of, and relationship between, levels of government
involved in financing long-term care for older people,
2006 .............................................................................................326
The role of local government in providing
long-term care for older people, 2006 ....................................330
Reforms indicating trends of (de)centralisation in
long-term care for older people, period 1980-2006 ..............333
Chapter 10
Table 1:
Public and non-public providers of in-kind services
to older people in six european countries
(approximate shares) ...............................................................349
Table 2:
Regional variation in actors involved in the delivery
of in-kind services to older people......................................... 354
Table 3:
The share of single- and multi-purpose agencies
delivering long-term care for older people .......................... 356
Table 4:
User involvement in the provision of formal
long-term care services for older people ..............................360
Chapter 11
Table 1:
Convergence trends and patterns and the influence
of central, mid- and lower-level authorities .........................380
Appendix
Table 1a:
Table 1b:
Reference areas for field research
at the different NUTS levels ....................................................448
Average size of main territorial units in chosen countries .449
The Rescaling Project and This Book
Yuri Kazepov
This book is the result of the “Rescaling Social Welfare Policies – A comparative study on the path towards multilevel governance in Europe” project. It was
a complex comparative project aimed at investigating the changes in both
the territorial organisation and the new actors’ organisation of selected
social policies in several European countries. The project developed under
the auspices of the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research in
2005, following an initial stimulus by Matti Heikkilä to whom this book is
dedicated. Matti, a good friend and a brilliant researcher felt that it was
important to investigate these issues in a pioneering project. Indeed, when
it started this was one of the very few projects on rescaling social policies.
No consolidated knowledge base existed to be used as a reference and many
methodological questions remained to be addressed even before starting.
We approached the issue with quite high ambitions in terms of the
policies to be considered, the countries to be involved and the methods
to be used. We targeted four policies, twelve countries and multiple methods, but ended up with three policies, eight countries and fewer methods.
Among the policies we were able to investigate: a) activation policies in the
labour market; b) social assistance; and c) long-term care for the elderly. We
unfortunately were obliged to drop migration policies. Having too many
policies was not only costly, but also complex in terms of management.
Among the countries that we were able to involve in the project are Finland,
France, Italy, Norway, Poland, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland. Unfortunately Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom did
not get funded by those countries’ respective national agencies and were
not able to participate in the study. This was a pity, because the territorial
dimension of social policies was becoming particularly relevant in their
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respective political debates. We had originally also planned the use of the
EUROMOD tax benefit micro-simulation model for identifying the redistributive impact of territorial reforms. Unfortunately, however, the person
assigned to this part of the project left the European Centre and it proved
very difficult to replace him.
Despite the aforesaid resizing of the project, the countries we investigated, the policies we have considered and the methods used are relevant
and interesting in relation to our understanding of the territorial dimension
of social policies and of the new governance arrangements.
Some additional complications arose, however. The project partners
did not know each other before starting the project and the funding was
distributed unevenly among them. In fact, the funding mechanism of the
project (see below) foresaw that each country had to finance its own part
of research. This naturally led to different levels of funding for the different
partners, who were first and foremost responsible towards their fund-givers.
These challenges contributed to the complexity of the project and required
several meetings not only to define the conceptual and methodological
frame, but also to ease collaboration among the numerous partners.
During our meetings we developed several working hypotheses to
frame our interpretation of the ongoing processes. A first hypothesis assumed that different institutional settings diversely frame the way in which
rescaling and governance processes are deployed in different countries. This
implies that there must be some degree of coherence between the ongoing
processes, their direction of change and the organisation of the State and the
welfare system/regime these countries belong to. This relation also holds
consequences for the interpretation of possible trends of convergence and/
or divergence. Almost all the chapters herein review these aspects against
the specificities of the single policy fields. A second hypothesis assumed
that the time frame during which specific processes take place influences the
way they act. For instance decentralising regulative capacities in a period
of economic expansion, when available resources are relatively high, has a
completely different meaning than decentralising regulative capacities in
times of economic penury and in the presence of neoliberalisation trends.
The importance of contextualising trends emerges as a crucial aspect to be
considered in interpreting the current changes. The need to adopt a variety
of both quantitative and qualitative methods to disentangle the complexity
of the processes at stake has also become evident.
The analysis of the results stemming from this project was also particularly complex, because we did not opt for country-specific chapters.
Rather, we went the more difficult path (but also the more interesting one)
of issue-specific chapters, examining these comparatively. To strengthen
this aspect, most of the chapters are written by colleagues from different
countries and different fields of specialisation, allowing the cross-fertilisation
of disciplinary knowledge. As the reader can easily imagine, this process
has not been easy.
The structure of the book
The book is organised into an introduction and two main parts. The introductory chapter presents the main issues at stake and proposes a frame
within which to understand the process of rescaling and the path towards
multilevel governance arrangements. Some results are also alluded to ahead
of time, in more general terms, and a typology of the territorial organisation of social policies in the different countries is presented; in particular
this is carried out concerning the changes the different welfare systems are
undergoing. One of the main points made is that the joint effect of the processes of territorial re-organisation and the multiplication of actors in policy
design, management and implementation is an overall process of subsidiarisation. This process has an ambivalent nature given that it is – as we will
see – legitimised by opposing ideologies (i.e. neoliberalism and participatory
democracy and grass-roots empowerment). It is also a process characterised by
converging rhetorical debates and diverging impacts. The chapter provides
some contextual elements to address these differences in social Europe, paving
the way for a more in-depth analysis of the policy-area-based chapters of
the first part of this book.
In the first part of the book the three specific policy areas and – respectively – each individual policy area are addressed in three distinctive
chapters. The first provides an overview of the literature in the specific
policy fields, which theories are used to understand and interpret them
and how they have changed. The second chapter addresses the territorial
dimension and how it has changed over the last two-three decades, while
the third chapter investigates how the policy-specific actors’ configurations
have changed over the same period of time. This structure is more or less
replicated for all three policies.
Activation policies are addressed in Chapters Two, Three and Four. In
the second chapter authored by Stefania Sabatinelli, the literature on activation policies is reviewed and the spatial dimension has been included
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in the analysis. In particular, the chapter focuses on the implications of the
activation paradigm in social assistance and labour market policies, aiming
at highlighting some of the main driving forces. The chapter investigates
the different meanings of the concept and the narratives developed to accompany its diffusion. From this point of view, activation is a policy area
in which the ambivalence of the processes of change is particularly clear: it
entails both neoliberal characteristics as well as innovative and empowering
policy solutions.
The third chapter by Barberis and Baumann compares the effects of
scalar configuration changes on labour market policies, providing contextual data and considering the implications of the aforesaid for users.
What emerges is clearly that multilevel governance and scale trends provide coordination problems that weaken the effectiveness of active labour
market policies. The equity of treatment during activation is also made an
open question in all countries, but in particular in countries with complex
patterns of multilevel governance and in those undergoing the process of
changing their state configuration from a centralist typology to a more or
less decentralised one.
The fourth chapter by Vappu Karjalainen completes the analysis of
activation policies, more specifically taking into consideration the territorial dimension and the emerging governance arrangements. The working
hypothesis of the chapter is that activation policies question the governance
and distribution of responsibility between territorial levels, due to the contradiction between the macro-nature of the structural causes of unemployment
and the local and individual nature of activation services. The governance of
activation policy challenges the traditional sector-based administration and
service structure of welfare society with bottom-up approaches. The aim is
to catch the overall developmental state of activation policy governance in
the countries considered in the present study.
Social assistance policies are addressed in Chapters Five, Six and Seven.
In Chapter Five authors Barberis, Sabatinelli and Bieri provide a general
view of the institutional settings within which social assistance policies
and the respective welfare systems are embedded. They define the actors’
degree of freedom, which also influences the way in which the interaction
and coordination in the policy process takes place at the vertical and horizontal levels.
In Chapter Six Minas and Øverbye analyse how, over the last decades,
the reorganisation of social assistance policies has entailed shifts of respon-
sibility between administrative levels. They address the consequences of
the territorial dispersion of authority upwards, downwards or sideways in
terms of the search for an optimal organisation of welfare policies. A major
trend identified in the chapter is towards the decentralisation of authority.
However, the authors show that – rather than representing a single rescaling strategy – decentralisation is a wide umbrella term for diverse and
contextualised political, administrative and financial processes which are
investigated in different sections of the chapter. The relevance of timing is
also highlighted as a crucial perspective to understand current dynamics,
i.e. the processes are more or less the same, but different contexts and different timing result in differentiated impacts. To this, the authors add the
portrayal of the ambivalent character of the policies stemming out of the
tension existing between empowering solutions and new public managementlike solutions which permeate the way in which reforms are legitimised.
In Chapter Seven Bergmark and Minas provide an in-depth account
of the wide array of actors involved in governing social assistance. They
begin with a structured inventory of who is involved at what level and –
in that respect – try to capture the relevant political-administrative span
with respect to the vertical as well as horizontal division of authority and
responsibilities therein. From that they proceed to describe how measures
are coordinated between different actors and how that relates to the degree
of targeting and fragmentation in the different countries involved in the
project. The idea is to identify the extent and character of significant networks and their contextual settings. A particularly relevant section of the
chapter addresses the fact that managerial structures and delivery systems
are, to a considerable extent, related through the scope of actors and their
relations. In order to capture this aspect in a more comprehensive manner
the nature of assessments and professional discretion is analysed in-depth,
with a special focus on different aspects of street-level decision-making.
The third and last policy we investigated is long-term care for older people (LTC), which is addressed in Chapters Eight, Nine and Ten. In Chapter
Eight Rahel Strohmeier Navarro Smith provides an overview of trends,
driving forces and differentiated impacts of the process of subsidiarisation
on the delivery of LTC policies. First, she investigates the changing role
of families in general and of women in particular in relation to the different welfare system configurations and the potential “re-familialisation” or
“de-familialisation” of long-term care. Second, she analyses the regional
variation in long-term care provision. The kind and amount of services and
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benefits publicly given to dependent older people differ according to the
institutionalised territorial frames designed for long-term care provision.
The chapter investigates the extent and type of variation, providing an
outlook on possible future developments.
In Chapters Nine and Ten Signy Vabo addresses, respectively, the territorial dimensions of long-term care policies for the elderly and the emergence
of new governance arrangements. In Chapter Nine she clearly shows the
complexity of the rescaling processes, which not only entail decentralisation, but also possible re-centralisation trends, according to the countries’
specific conditions. Regulation, management and finances are addressed
and analysed as relevant dimensions of these processes, highlighting some
critical points: the importance of health policies for specific targets, and the
blurring boundaries between formal and informal care. Both assume different meanings in the different institutional arrangements characterising the
countries we investigated. Chapter Ten analyses the increasing number of
actors from different sectors of society in the field of long-term care policies,
combining it with scalar issues. The author also highlights how, in long-term
care policies, hierarchy is decreasing in relevance. Meanwhile, market-based
and self-organising modes of governance are increasing. The chapter analyses how this takes place considering three different perspectives: the mix of
actors, institutional fragmentation and the role of the user.
The second part of the book addresses two transversal issues that are
crucial in understanding the processes of subsidiarisation and their impacts:
a) the convergence-divergence debate; b) the coordination issue. In Chapter
Eleven Barberis, Bergmark and Minas address the first of these issues by
disentangling the complexities of the convergence-divergence debate. The
authors investigate the different phases of convergence studies and the
fact that the issue has been approached by two intimately related research
concerns: i) the reasons for which convergence has, or has not, occurred,
and ii) what exactly has converged. Indeed convergence is a complex and
multifaceted phenomenon and general convergence trends are not easy to
establish. Our empirical findings tie in with a growing body of data which
challenges the idea of increasing similarity among welfare states. Many
welfare states have, in fact, proven to be comparatively resilient to external
driving forces. The authors make a nuanced analysis of the ongoing processes of change and identify a converging trend in the increased relevance
of sub-national authorities and diverging trends as far as the relevance of
the nation-state is concerned. In some countries its relevance has declined
substantially, while in other countries it has remained stable. Finally, in
others it has re-gained relevance.
In Chapter Twelve Øverbye, Strohmeier Navarro Smith, Karjalainen
and Stremlow address the ways in which the coordination challenge is
handled across countries and across policy areas. Indeed the subsidiarisation
of social policies brought about a fragmentation of levels and actors involved
in policy design, management and implementation. The chapter describes
the whole range of possible options adopted to address this problem, highlighting how they are taken up in the different countries to counteract the
negative effects of fragmentation. Are these different strategies tied to different welfare systems? Building on previous analyses, the authors look at
the situation in the small Nordic countries, contrasted to selected examples
from the more complex institutional structures found in Continental Europe. Their analysis confirms the fact that the implementation of converging
trends – including coordination measures – has varied depending on the
institutional structure of the country’s welfare systems.
The last chapter of the book by Van Gestel and Herbillon can be considered a conclusion of the book as it examines the lessons we gained for
further developing the theory and practices of the rescaling process of social
welfare policies. What is the added value of this study in terms of exploration,
evaluation and understanding of macro and micro policies and effects? And
how can we describe its specific and original contributions? In answering
these questions the chapter returns to the initial research hypotheses and
perspectives presented in the first chapter, in order to identify and discuss
the issues that lie at the heart of this study: the emergence of new modes of
territorial governance in social welfare policies; their implementation and
associated risks. Drawing upon the findings of the Rescaling project, the
authors discuss the prospects for territorial governance in social welfare
policies in two ways. First, they qualify the main trends in the territorial
structures of governance at multiple levels as shaped by regulations from
different (political) centres of command and as a process of co-production
between various actors possessing different levels of status and authority.
Second, they discuss the differences between the three policy areas related
to their aims and background in the development of social welfare policies. They also reflect on the methodology that has been used for this pilot
research project, developing several suggestions for further research and
practice in social welfare policies.
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A substantive appendix by Eduardo Barberis complements the book
by providing a short overview on the triangulation method we used in the
project. This is not only embedded in the current literature, but also discusses
the implications of the use of these methodologies, and in particular of the
vignettes, which provided an extremely interesting empirical basis.
Thanks and acknowledgments
22
Such a complex project could have never been carried out without the help
of many people. First I would like to thank Kai Leichsenring and Mercedes
Gonzalez-Quijano from the European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and
Research. Kai not only provided efficient and smooth project management
but also relevant input throughout the whole project as well as to some of
the chapters in their early stages. Mercedes was the organisational backup person, who organised meetings not only with work-related activities
but also with important social events. Bernd Marin, the Executive Director
of the Centre, not only allowed all this to take place, but also stimulated
and supported the whole process of the production of this book. Willem
Stamatiou provided the proofreading and typesetting, patiently following
my (almost never-ending) requests. Peter Melvyn, also from the European
Centre, provided a first comparative draft at the beginning of the project,
for which he should be gratefully mentioned.
In order to back up my editing work with policy-specific knowledge, I
involved colleagues who peer-reviewed each contribution, providing useful
comments and suggestions. The review process took place both during the
closing seminar of the project held in Lucerne in November 2008 and later
on the drafts of the chapters. David Benassi, Rik van Berkel, Giuliano Bonoli,
Vando Borghi, Walter Hanesch, Enzo Mingione, August Österle, Joakim
Palme, Emmanuele Pavolini, Costanzo Ranci and Barbara da Roit should
be gratefully mentioned for their critical comments and help.
Tine Rostgaard and CamillaThorgaard should be thanked for providing
important insight into the Danish case. Unfortunately the Danish National
Centre for Social Research did not get funding, and thus they were only able
to provide the WP1, which is an interesting and important background
document for Denmark. Marta Plana Serrahima should also be mentioned
for her support in integrating the Spanish WP1.
Eduardo Barberis helped me throughout the whole project in whatever
activity was needed. His flexibility and excellence are a rare quality for which
I am very thankful to him. The final quality of the text and the substantial
improvements in the language and style herein are due to Catherine Lea
Farwell, who did a terrific job.
Finally, I would like to thank the partners of the project very much
for being so patient with me during the whole period during which we
worked together. I am aware that sometimes I might have been tedious and
insisting, but I hope it was worth working together. Not all project partners
authored a chapter in this book, but they should all be gratefully named, as
they all contributed to providing the empirical basis of this book (see list
below). The authors of chapters, on the contrary, had the opportunity of
receiving my long and never-ending comments on their contributions, so I
thank them very much for considering them when revising their respective
chapters more than once. They should also be thanked for their patience in
waiting for the final product.
Last but not least, I owe much to my family, to Simona, Alexander and
Lara, who was born and came back to life after a difficult delivery. Without
them the book probably would have been published much earlier, but my
life would have surely been deprived of the most important experience I
have ever had.
Urbino, 20 April, 2010
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Members of the research teams
European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research
Kai Leichsenring (project manager)
Mercedes Gonzalez-Quijano (research assistant)
Asghar Zaidi (project associate)
Manfred Huber (project associate)
Bernd Marin (project associate)
Erna Riemer (finance and administration)
Willem Stamatiou (publications officer)
Finnish team
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Matti Heikkilä (coordination)
Vappu Karjalainen (coordination and fieldwork)
Taina Rintala (fieldwork)
French team
Jean-Michel Herbillon (coordination and fieldwork)
Agnes Gramain (coordination and fieldwork)
Samuel Neuberg (fieldwork)
Albane Exertier (fieldwork)
Nicolette van Gestel (external expert)
Italian team
Yuri Kazepov (coordination)
Eduardo Barberis (fieldwork and support)
Barbara Da Roit (fieldwork)
Tatiana Saruis (fieldwork)
Marco Arlotti (fieldwork)
Matteo Villa (fieldwork)
Stefania Sabatinelli (fieldwork)
Norwegian team
Einar Øverbye (coordination)
Signy Irene Vabo (fieldwork)
Polish team
Joanna Starega-Piasek (responsible)
Irena Woycicka (coordination)
Marianna Zielenska (fieldwork)
Karolina Sztanderska (fieldwork)
Spanish team
Margarita Bravo Torres (coordination)
Maria Luz Cid Ruiz (coordination)
Javier del Castillo Pintado (fieldwork)
Carmen Diaz (fieldwork)
Maria Eugenia Bolaños López (fieldwork)
Swedish team
Åke Bergmark (coordination)
Renate Minas (fieldwork)
Dietmar Rauch (fieldwork)
Swiss team
Beat Baumann (coordination and fieldwork)
Jürgen Stremlow (co-coordination)
Annegret Bieri (fieldwork)
Rahel Strohmeier Navarro Smith (fieldwork)
Mathieu Lexton (fieldwork)
25
Yuri Kazepov
Sources of funding
The project Rescaling Social Policies towards Multilevel Governance followed an
experimental funding system within the framework of the European Centre’s
governing bodies, representing the governments of the UN-European region.
Following an initial outline of the project proposal, seven Member States
expressed their interest in participating by funding a national research team
and the coordination of the European Centre. Thus each participating country funded its national part of research activities. In addition, the European
Centre decided to fund the project’s scientific coordinator, Yuri Kazepov,
and thus also the Italian case-study.
We gratefully acknowledge the following financial support:
26
Finland
STAKES, The National Institute for Welfare and Health, which on 1 January
2009 became the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) following
the merger of STAKES with the National Public Health Institute (KTL)
France
Ministère du travail, de la solidarité et de la fonction publique, DARES –
Direction de l’Animation de la Recherche et des Études Statistiques (Ministry
of Labour, Solidarity and Public Service, DARES)
Italy
European Centre for Social Welfare Policy and Research, Vienna (Austria)
Norway
Forsknigsrådet (The Research Council of Norway)
Poland
Ministerstwo Polityki Społecznej (Ministry of Social Policy), now
Ministry of Labour and Social Policy
Instytut Rozwoju Służb Społecznych (Institute for Development of Social
Services)
Instytut Badań nad Gospodarką Rynkową (Gdansk Institute for Market
Economics)
Spain
IMSERSO – Institute for Older Persons and Social Services, International
Department
Switzerland
The Federal Social Insurance Office (FSIO)
DORE (DO REsearch) of the Swiss National Science Foundations
(SNSF)
Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts
Sweden
Institutet för Framtidsstudier (The Institute for Futures Studies), Stockholm,
Sweden
27
Yuri Kazepov
Acronyms and abbreviations
AFPA
ALMP
ANPE
APEC
API
APW
APA
ASSEDIC
28
(Fr) Association nationale pour la formation professionnelle des
adultes (National Association for Adult Vocational Training)
Active Labour Market Policies
(Fr) Agence Nationale pour l’Emploi (National Employment
Agency)
(Fr) Association pour l’Emploi des Cadres (Job-centre for Executive
Managers)
(Fr) Allocation Parent Isolé (Allowance for Single Parents)
Average Production Worker
(Fr) Allocation Personnalisée d’Autonomie (Individualised
Allowance for Autonomy)
(Fr) Association pour l’emploi dans l’industrie et le commerce
(Association for Employment in the Industry and Trade)
BSV (FSIO) Bundesamt für Sozialversicherung (Federal Social Insurance
Office)
CCAS
CIS
CLIC
CMS
CNAM
CNSA
CPI
DDASS
DIS
DRASS
(Fr) Centre Communal d’Action Sociale (Municipal Service for
Social Action)
(Pl) Centrum Integracji Społecznej (Centre for Social
Integration)
(Fr) Centre Locaux d’Information et de Coordination (Community
Information and Coordination Units)
(Ch) Centre médico-social (Center for Social and Health Care)
(Fr) Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (National Academy
for Craft and Professions)
(Fr) Caisse Nationale de solidarité pour l’autonomie (National
Solidarity for Autonomy Fund)
(It) Centri per l’impiego (Job-centres)
(Fr) Direction Départementale Affaires Sanitaires et Social
(Department Directorate for Health and Social Affairs)
(Be) Droit à l’Insertion Sociale (Right to Social Insertion)
(Fr) Direction Régionale des Affaires Sanitaires et Sociales (Regional
Directorate for Health and Social Affairs)
EMS
ESF
EES
EU
FASILD
(Ch) Établissements medico-sociaux (residential care; Older
People’s Home)
(Eu) European Social Fund
(Eu) European Employment Strategy
(Eu) European Union
FSIO
(Fr) Fonds d’aide et de soutien pour l’intégration et la lutte contre
les Discriminations (Fund for the Integration of Migrants and
the Fight against Discriminations)
(It) Fondo Nazionale Politiche Sociali (National Fund for Social
Policies)
(Ch) Federal Social Insurance Office (see BVS)
GDP
Gross Domestic Product
IAE
(Fr) Instituts d’Administration des Entreprises (Institute for
Business Administration)
(Ch) Interinstitutionelle Zusammenarbeit (Inter-institutional
Cooperation)
International Labour Organisation
International Monetary Fund
(Es) Instituto Nacional de Empleo (National Labour Institute)
(It) Istituto Nazionale per la Previdenza Sociale (national administration of pension funds and monetary social assistance
measures)
FNPS
IIZ
ILO
IMF
INEM
INPS
KELA
KUTU
(FI) Kansaneläkelaitos (National Social Insurance Institution)
(FI) Laki kuntouttavasta työtoiminnasta (Act on Rehabilitating
Work Experience)
LAFOS
LMP
LTC
(FI) Työvoiman palvelukeskus (Labour Force Service Centre)
Labour Market Policies
Long-Term Care
NAP
NAV
(Eu) National Action Plan
(No) NAV Arbeids- og velferdsetaten (The Norwegian Labour
and Welfare Administration)
Non-Governmental Organisation
NGO
29
Yuri Kazepov
NPM
NUTS
New Public Management
(Eu) Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics
OECD
OMC
OPS
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(Eu) Open Method of Coordination
(Pl) Ośrodek pomocy społecznej (Local Social Assistance Centre)
MOPS
(Pl) Miejski Ośrodek POmocy Społęcznej (Municipal Social
Assistance Office)
PCPR
(Pl) Powiatowe centrum pomocy rodzinie (Family Assistance
Centre)
Public Employment Services
(Fr) Plan locaux pluriannuels pour l’insertion et l’emploi (Local
pluri-annual plans for social insertion and employment)
Purchasing Power Parities
(Fr) Prestation de solidarité dépendance (Dependency Benefit)
(Pl) Powiatowy urząd pracy (Local Labour Office)
(Pl) Polska Zjednoczona Partia Robotnicza (Polish United Workers’
Party)
PES
PLIE
30
PPP
PSD
PUP
PUWP
RMG
RMI
RMR
ROPS
RSA
SKOS
SPE
SPEN
SPER
(Pt) Rendimento Minimo Garantido (Guaranteed Minimum
Income)
(Fr) Revenue Minimum d’Insertion (Minimum Income for
Insertion)
(Ch) Revenue Minimum de Réinsertion (Minimum Income for
Re-insertion)
(Pl) Regionalny ośrodek polityki społecznej (Regional Social Policy
Centre)
(Fr) Revenue de Solidarité Active (Active Solidarity Income)
(Ch) Schweizerische Konferenz für Sozialhilfe (Swiss Conference
for Social Assistance)
(Fr) Service Public de l’Emploi (Public Employment Services)
(Fr) Service Public de l’Emploi National (National Public
Employment Services)
(Fr) Service Public de l’Emploi Regional (Regional Public
SPED
SPEL
SVOAM
(Fr) Service Public de l’Emploi Departmental (Departmental Public
(Fr) Service Public de l’Emploi Local (Local Public Employment
Services)
(Ch) Schweizerischer Verband der Organisationen für Arbeitsmarktmassnahmen (Swiss Association of Employment Facilication
Organisations)
UNEDIC
(Fr) Union Nationale pour l’Emploi dans l’Industrie et le Commerce
(National Union for Employment and Development in Industry
and Commerce)
VALTAVA
(Sf) Sosiaali- ja terveydenhuollon valtionosuuslaki (Act on Planning
and Government Grants for Social Welfare and Health Care)
WG
WP1
Whole-of-Government
Work package 1. On Rescaling Social Welfare Policies (in the single
countries)
Work package 2. Vignettes (on the three policies considered in the
project)
World Trade Organisation
WP2
WTO
31
Rescaling Social Policies towards Multilevel Governance in Europe
Setting the Scene:
Rescaling and Governance
33
Yuri Kazepov
34
Chapter 1
Rescaling Social Policies towards Multilevel
Governance in Europe: Some Reflections on
Processes at Stake and Actors Involved
Yuri Kazepov
Introduction
The territorial dimension of social policies has long been a neglected perspective in comparative social policy analysis. Scholars took for granted that
social policies were national policies and almost all comparative work which
has been done after World War II based comparisons on national data.1 At
the same time, the nation-state strengthened its identity and legitimation
thanks to the redistributive capacity of welfare policies.
Since the end of the 1970s, the deep structural changes that have occurred kicked-off processes of territorial re-organisation of social policies.
The structural changes – mainly socio-demographic and socio-economic – are
well known and have been investigated in all industrialised countries. They
include the ageing of the population, increasing instability of family arrangements, decreasing fertility rates coupled with a deep economic restructuring
process, long-term unemployment, the increased participation of women in
the labour market, and the spread of services and new technologies which
have fostered new and more flexible modes of production identified as the
mainstream solution to economic problems.
1
We are, of course, aware of the fact that comparing sub-national levels has always been
complicated. A first crucial step for sub-national comparative work has been the introduction of the Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) system by Eurostat almost
30 years ago. The first regionalised statistics were produced accordingly in the second
half of the 1970s and solely covered the main demographic indicators. A complex process
of negotiating the definition of indicators started in order to provide a single uniform
breakdown of territorial units for the production of regional statistics Europe-wide. International agencies (most prominently Eurostat and the OECD) did not systematically
organise institutional data in order to consider other territorial levels except the national
one up to the 1990s. The NUTS classification has been used in community legislation
since 1988, but only after 2003 was an ad hoc regulation approved (1059/03).
35
Yuri Kazepov
36
These changes undermined the functioning of welfare institutions
and the effectiveness of social policies by affecting how social risks were
produced and the ways in which resources fuelled social policies (Castel,
1997; Taylor-Gooby, 2005; Bonoli, 2006). Postwar policies had developed to
address specific risks in a context of economic growth, increasing available
resources and relatively stable needs, foreseeing a virtuous positive-sumgame in which redistributive conflicts were kept under control through the
availability of more resources. The breaking down of this “system”, often
labelled as Keynesian Fordism2, brought about new conflicts and needs (from
unemployment to care) which accelerated the emergence of a deep fiscal
crisis of the state (O’Connor, 1971), unable to find a new balance between
available resources and needs in a context calling for structural reforms
(Ferrera, 1998; Armingeon and Bonoli, 2006).
The need for structural institutional changes has been met by an intense
reform activity which covered most policy areas in the last two decades. The
emerging picture is complex and not always easy to disentangle. Reforming
welfare states in a context of budgetary constraints is a tricky question and
a challenging task. In particular, this is due to the difficulties of intervening
in established constituencies and interests, as well as to the path-dependent
tendency of expenditure (Boeri, 2005) and access criteria. All of the latter
resist the new power balances. In this scenario most reforms have addressed
both the territorial dimension of social policies and the actors involved in
their design, management, implementation and funding. I have called the
combined effect of these two reform processes the subsidiarisation of social
policies (Kazepov, 2008).
The concept of subsidiarity3 captures well the two processes of change
because it addresses both the vertical – i.e. the territorial reorganisation of
2
3
Régulation theory (Boyer and Saillard, 2002) combined the historical analysis of Fordism
(Gramsci, 1950) with the analysis of the conditions which allow the permanence and the
transformation of the capitalist mode of production. From this point of view Keynesianism played an important and stabilising role. Further developments are provided in
Jessop (2002, 2008).
The origin of the concept of subsidiarity dates back to the Political Methodice Digesta of
Johannes Althusius (1614) who sought protection for the religious associations and the
city itself against central power. Pursue of individual liberty and protection from tyranny
was also the concern of the American Federalists (e.g. Madison, 1787 quoted in Føllesdal,
1998: 204). The principle of subsidiarity is also connected to the catholic social doctrine
which, at the end of the 19th century (with the encyclical Rerum Novarum, 1891 by Pope
Leo XIII), attempted to define a middle course between the excesses of laissez-fair capitalism on one hand and the various forms of totalitarianism (Fascism, Communism, etc.),
which subordinate the individual to the state, on the other (Waschkuhn, 1995; Føllesdal,
1998).
regulatory powers – and the horizontal dimension – i.e. the multiplication
of actors – of social policies, pointing to increasingly complex multilevel
governance4 solutions to social policy reform needs.
The definition of subsidiarity implies that matters ought to be handled
by the smallest (or lowest) competent authority, meaning that a central authority should perform only those tasks which cannot be performed effectively
at a lower level (Waschkuhn, 1995). This does not necessarily mean that the
local level is the best solution for all problems. However, as we shall see,
the joint effect of two ongoing processes predominantly has brought about
a decentralisation of regulatory powers and an increased role of nongovernmental actors. The relationship between territorial rescaling and the spread
of new governance arrangements also becomes evident in the involvement of
civil society in the policy-making process, justified with the need of “getting
closer” to the citizen (Dahl, 1998; Hirst, 1994; Fung, 2003; Powell, 2007).
The concept of subsidiarity has gained momentum since the end of
the last century and has now become a rhetorical keystone behind most
reforms in Europe.5 Different actors at different scales interact and bargain
without necessarily a clearly settled hierarchy (Bache and Flinders, 2004; Le
Galès, 2002). The ideological background of the concept and the multitude
of interests it serves are usually under-investigated, despite the fact that
ideologies are used to interpret and frame the processes themselves (Van
Kersbergen and Van Waarden, 2004). The claim to flexibilise policies through
market-oriented reforms and reforms targeted to enhance the employability
of claimants (Serrano Pascual, 2007) has strongly influenced the direction
of social policy change in most European countries. This neoliberalisation
process, however, has not been uniform and has varied in time and space
(Jessop, 2002; Brenner, 2004). In the field of social policies a different rhetoric
coexists, tending to combine the utilisation of market strategies and competitiveness with more innovative forms of solidarity and social cohesion.
4
5
Multilevel governance is a term used to grasp the complexities emerging in the interplay
between the two processes of change we are analysing. The term was first used by Marks
(1992) to capture developments in EU structural policy following its major reform in
1988. Subsequently, Marks and others developed the concept of multilevel governance to
apply it more broadly to the EU decision-making process (Marks et al., 1996). However,
soon it became the analysis framework for all kinds of regional issues (Loughlin, 2007:
385).
In the European Union, the principle of subsidiarity was established in the Treaty of
Maastricht (1992), and is part of the proposed new Treaty establishing a Constitution
for Europe (Title 3, Art. I, 11). However, at the local level it was already a key element of
the European Charter of Local Self-Government, an instrument of the Council of Europe
promulgated in 1985 (see Article 4, Paragraph 3 of the Charter).
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Yuri Kazepov
38
In this scenario, scholars started to reconsider the territorial dimension
in their analytical frameworks taking it no longer for granted, but considering
it a privileged perspective from which to understand the ambivalent character of the processes of social policy re-organisation and reform (McEwen
and Moreno, 2004; Ferrera, 2005; Zürn and Leibfried, 2005; Clarke, 2005).
The spread of the subsidiarity principle as a legitimate basis for both increased effectiveness on one hand and stakeholders’ empowerment on the
other influenced the reform process. The aforesaid provided ground for an
increasingly complex picture.
The aim of this book is to explore this complexity from the point of view
of social policies, attempting to highlight their specificity in the rescaling
process considering the multiplication of actors as well. In this introductory
chapter we will provide some contextual elements to help address the differences existing within social Europe and pave the way for a more in-depth
analysis of the policy area-based chapters of the first part of this book. The
specific policy areas we selected, namely activation within the labour market,
social assistance and long-term care policies for the elderly, are proxies of
the welfare systems that will allow us to explore both the existing diversity
in social policy arrangements as well as the similarities in the challenges
welfare systems have to face. This does not prevent us from starting from
the welfare systems/regimes debate to investigate the single policy areas
and to see whether or not the degree of intra-system coherence might be
challenged for specific policy fields; in particular, considering the rescaling process and the spread of new governance arrangements, two specific
perspectives are taken up in the policy area chapters. The policy areas we
will consider in this book underwent important reforms from both these
perspectives and can be considered particularly promising lenses through
which to analyse the processes at stake because they: a) cover claimants and
beneficiaries with different positions in the life cycle; b) present a different
degree of institutionalisation6 in the overall welfare state organisation and
c) present different institutional arrangements and degrees of decentralisation and privatisation.
In order to frame this overall objective of the book and considering both
dimensions of change, this introductory chapter I starts by relating social
policy analysis and the production of scale (§ 1), adopting a middle-range
level of theorisation (Merton, 1968: 39-71), i.e. using a theoretically informed
6
Social assistance is the oldest form of institutionalised protection which underwent
several paradigm shifts in the last centuries (Alber, 1982), while long-term care for the
elderly is the most recent one.
pragmatic orientation as the best option to consider the complexities that
social policy analysis entails. This implies that I avoid the use of all-encompassing grand theories to explain the changes and present a synthesis of the
results of our theoretically informed empirical investigation. Subsequently
attention will be devoted to the different forms the rescaling process can take
(§ 2) and the multiplication of actors (§ 3). Despite the commonalities these
two processes share in all countries, differences between welfare systems
in Europe influence the directions these changes may take. In § 4 the different spatial and actor configurations are shortly presented together with the
main features of the welfare systems taken into consideration in this book.
The nearly prosaic working hypothesis is that the subsidiarisation of social
policies is a converging normative rhetoric in most European countries’ social policy reforms, but in most cases not necessarily a convergent practice.
Variations in the implementation of this rhetoric into substantive rules occur
according to the specificities of the respective institutional frames at national
and/or sub-national levels. This assumption – which will be reviewed in
depth in the final chapters of the book, in particular in Chapter 11 – will be
briefly addressed (§ 5) considering the pros and cons of the processes at stake
and the main critical dimensions that emerge as open questions.
1
Social policies and the production of scale
In general terms, scale can be defined as “the result of marking territories (...)
through boundaries and enclosures, documents and rules, enforcing agents
and their authoritative resources” (Marston et al., 2005: 420). It might also
be defined as “the nested hierarchy of bounded spaces of different size”
(Delaney and Leitner, 1997: 93).7 There is now some consensus that scale
is not a fixed category anymore, but rather a socially constructed dimension (Marston, 2000). Conceiving state territoriality as a static background
for regulatory processes and running into what Agnew (1994) termed the
territorial trap, is not possible anymore: scales are changing in the cultural,
economic, political and social dimensions and of these processes evidence
7
The existence of a nested hierarchy does not prevent the existence of multiple scales
and hierarchies that might also be mutually disconnected and sometimes follow desynchronised trends (Jessop, 2005: 227). Within social policies this is more common than
one might expect, in particular within highly fragmented and categorically structured
welfare states like some continental or South-European ones. The de-synchronised
reform trend existing between labour market and social assistance policies in Italy is a
striking example (Kazepov, 2008).
39
Yuri Kazepov
40
is widely acknowledged. Despite this consensus, however, there is quite a
debate on how this construction takes place, which actors, groups and powers are involved and what dynamic is developed out of their interaction.
The political economy of scale gave rise to a relevant but contested
debate in human and economic geography and other related disciplines
sensitive towards “spatial” views of social phenomena.8 This debate has
been going on for some decades now; in particular this has been so since the
spatial arrangements of economic activities started to change substantially
from the 1970s onwards through globalisation and localisation as the result
of capitalist forces reshaping their scalar relations. Political-economy explanations argue that rescaling has in general to do with the process of creating
conditions that are more favourable to capital accumulation (Somerville,
2004). In particular, it is seen as the attempt to find a new territorial fix to the
development of capitalism (Peck and Tickell, 1994; Brenner, 2004), i.e. new
scales at which regulatory settings favour the development of a neoliberal
frame for economic activities. From this perspective, Cox (2002: 342) sees
the main driving force of rescaling in the explicit strategy “of outflanking
opposition and resistance (organised mainly at the national level)” to capital
accumulation (Somerville, 2004: 142). The debate developed further and the
territorial arrangements seem no longer as fixed as they were considered
before, because they are increasingly embedded into strategic relational networks (Jessop, 2008) which, in a relatively flexible way, change-over-time
both the territorial dimension of regulation and the actors involved in the
negotiations concerning the boundaries of those regulations. Despite these
developments, the rescaling process remains functional to capitalist accumulation.
What happens when we use the concept of scale in addressing social
policies? Social policies indeed play an important role in the construction
of scale. This has been true since the very beginning when they fuelled the
construction of the nation-state, its legitimacy and identity. Social policies
structure redistributive communities as the result of the states’ capacity,
8
The literature on this topic is growing fast. See for instance: Swyngedouw (1997, 2005);
Brenner (2004, 2009); Somerville (2004); Collinge (2006). For a critical view of scale see
Marston et al. (2005) who pursue a flat ontology. For the relation between rescaling and
governance see the special issue edited by Gualini (2006). More recently Lobao, Martin and Rodrìguez-Pose edited a special issue of the “Cambridge Journal of Regions,
Economy and Society” on rescaling (2009) and Keil and Mahon edited the volume
Leviathan Undone? Towards a Political Economy of Scale (2009). Both these publications
provide the state-of-the-art on the rescaling processes and also start to engage with the
rescaling processes of social policies, even though not as their main focus of analysis.
ability and power to define regulative frames, allocating duties and rights
and redistributing resources. A scalar perspective on social policy analysis
should consider the scale of social policies as the peculiar extension or characteristic of regulative capacity, i.e. as the jurisdiction within which “the rule of
law” can exercise its power9 in relation to redistributive issues and services
provision. This meso-level institutional approach considers the ability of the
state to define and change the boundaries within which to impose its rules
and regulations. From this perspective, the welfare state can be seen as the
last step of the long-term historical development through which territorially
bounded political communities came to introduce redistributive arrangements for their citizens (Ferrera, 2005). The issue at stake in this volume is
that the territorial bond of political communities is changing scale, shifting
– presumably – also the redistributive capacities states have in different
directions as well. In particular, this is true towards to sub-national levels.
How can we interpret this change?
If we follow the critical political economy approach and apply it to
social policy changes, we have to consider rescaling and the multiplication
of actors, as an explicit answer of the capitalist system to the collapse10 of
the positive-sum-game of economic growth and redistribution. This characterised and legitimised the capitalist system during the trente glorieuses
in the postwar period, by allowing most actors to improve their economic
and social position. While I share the concerns of scholars highlighting
the drawbacks of neoliberalisation in both the political economy of scale
and social policy analysis, I also think that the processes taking place are
more complex than single ideologies are able to represent (Pickvance, 2008).
Neoliberalism critics are able to describe only a portion – even though an
important one – of the changes taking place and might underplay (or even
neglect) the role of other co-existing processes which are gaining relevance
in social policy analysis. For instance, both the spread of individualisation
tendencies in social policy design and delivery and the new participatory
9
10
The rule of law developed after the Peace Treaty of Westphalia (1648) where the exclusive
right of each state to rule within its own boarders was recognised by all other states. After
this “external sovereignty” became established in the international arena, “the rule of
law superseded tyranny and the powers of the state were differentiated and separated.
(...). With its monopoly of the use of force, the state was then able to consolidate and
acquire exclusive rights to these legal powers” (Leibfried and Zürn, 2005: 6).
The literature on the reasons why this happened and the relation with the welfare state
is quite extensive and varies according to ideology, discipline and aims. See for instance
O’Connors (1971), Gough (1979), Offe (1973) for the neo-marxist account, while see
Murray (1984) and Mead (1991) for the neoliberal perspective.
41
Yuri Kazepov
arrangements necessarily entail a rescaling process downwards to the local
level, where disadvantaged people or groups with increasingly differentiated needs can be empowered with tailored – and therefore more effective – interventions, up to their inclusion in the decision-making processes
(Craig and Porter, 2006; Powell, 2007). For these reasons, state theorists
and social policy analysts tend to embrace a more middle-range theoretical
approach, which is not developing a grand theory but attempts to consider
the co-existence of different ideologies (e.g. Leibfried and Zürn, 2005). The
outcome of their interplay is influenced by a pragmatic orientation of the
actors involved in the policy-making process and by the compromises they
bargained. In this book, we tie in with this middle-range approach and take
some first steps in exploring rescaling processes and emerging governance
arrangements for the three policy areas under investigation11 rooting them
in their respective theoretical debates. The complexities to be kept under
control in this exercise are, however, many and this book provides just a
first and empirically grounded exploration.
42
2
Implicit and explicit forms of rescaling social policies
Up to the second half of the 1970s most welfare policies were regulated at
the national level (McEwen and Moreno, 2005). This was true not only for
contributory-based policies, but also for active labour market policies and
other standardised welfare services (e.g. job placement services) (Ferrera,
2005). These policies were accompanied by specific forms of spatial Keynesianism through which the state promoted the economic development
in peripheral areas such as the Mezzogiorno in Italy or Andalusia in Spain,
in the attempt to iron out existing differences at the sub-national levels
(Brenner, 2004: 460). In this phase, welfare policies were characterised by a
collective management of individual standardised risks, within the frame
of a national territorial dimension.
The processes of institutional change which were triggered by the sociodemographic and socio-economic transformations followed different directions in Europe, according to the characteristics and internal dynamics of
the sphere within which political decisions had to be implemented. Within
the economic sphere, both supra-national and sub-national actors become
11
For a short introduction into the project see the preface and the methodological appendix
by Barberis in this volume.
relevant. On one hand, the European Union established the common market,
defined competition rules and introduced the Euro and the European Monetary Union. On the other side, cities and regions acquired a strategic importance in the frame of global competitiveness (Swyngedouw, 1997; Crouch et
al., 2001; Salet, 2006; Buck et al., 2005) because the economic performance of
their territories increasingly became the basis for their revenues and their
ability to guarantee the well-being of their communities.
Within the sphere of social policies, the scenario is slightly different.
At the supra-national level of the European Union, with a few exceptions
mainly related to the rhetoric of the employment strategy (Ashiagbor, 2005),
social policies played a rather marginal role.12 Formally important steps
have been taken such as the common objectives in the fight against social
exclusion and poverty adopted at the Nice European Council (2000), and
with the NAPs Inclusion and the NAPs (Hantrais, 2007). These documents,
however, did not translate into concrete policy measures at the European
level.13 What happened, on the contrary, is that all supra-national market
regulations provided – through the Maastricht parameters and the stability
pact – the budgetary constraints within which social policies had to develop
defining the macro-economic frame for their compatibility.
Within this scenario sub-national actors – in particular regions and
cities – also increased their role in regulatory terms. This is due to several
reasons which reflect the contradictory trends ranging from a neoliberalising rise to the bottom (Ferrera, 2005) to the empowerment of bottom-up
initiatives. The resulting landscape – as the single policy area chapters will
show – is characterised by the complex coexistence of all policy levels, with
differing degrees of freedom in constantly negotiating and renegotiating the
new political opportunity structures available (Le Galès, 2002) to them. The
rhetoric of subsidiarity legitimising this process highlights the importance
12
13
For an overview up to the mid 1990s see the Green Paper on European Social Policy: Options for the Union (COM (93)551). See also: “The Charter of Fundamental Rights of the
European Union” (2000/C364/01). For the developments since then, consult the online
database available at: http://ec.europa.eu/social/
This should not underplay the importance of the supra-national level in analysing social
policies, which is a rather promising terrain of research. Steps towards transnational
social policies include relatively durable arrangements of formal and informal policies, provided by the state or private for-profit or non-for-profit actors, who develop
innovative forms of cushioning against targeted emerging social risks. They may range
from arrangements addressing post-retirement migration, seasonal migration, medical
treatments for specific groups, agreements between health insurance companies, etc.
(Faist, 2009).
43
Yuri Kazepov
of proximity to citizens, often underplaying the risks that lacking common
rights, standards and opportunities might bear. Actually, common rights
and standards do not mean standardising policies, but considering equal
treatment given equal contextual conditions. This aspect, however, is usually not considered.
Within the processes of territorial re-organisation of social policies
we can recognise two main trends over the last 30 years: an implicit (A-B in
Figure 1) and an explicit form of rescaling (B-C in Figure 1). In the case of
implicit rescaling, what changes is the relative weight of specific measures
regulated at different territorial levels. For instance, policies regulated at the
national level lose resources, claimants and personnel in favour of policies
regulated at the sub-national, local level. In the case of explicit rescaling
forms of territorial re-organisation of social policies, it is reforms that shift
regulatory power to other levels. The latter, for instance, occurred in most
European countries for all public employment services, which become increasingly localised (Lundin and Skedinger, 2000; Ferrera, 2006).
44
Figure 1:
Implicit and explicit rescaling
Europe
State
Region
A
B
C
City
-1700 1789 1860-70
1945 1973-79
1990
1995
2000-
Both processes took place in almost all European countries and it can
be said that in general, since the end of the 1970s up to the mid-1980s, the
implicit model of change prevailed. On the other hand explicit reforms
become more relevant after the second half of the 1990s. The institutional
inertia of Keynesian solutions to specific conditions of need in fact slowed
down the process of change, and unemployment had to become a structural
phenomenon before the fiscal pressure on the welfare state could trigger
deeper reforms. The main reform process started in the second half of the
1990s, in parallel with the attempts to contain the dynamics of unemployment with the spread of both active labour market and activation policies
(see Chapters 2-4 herein). Here, we witnessed explicit forms of territorial
re-organisation of social policies through reforms aimed at modifying the allocation of regulative capacities at different scales of government, legitimised
by the recourse made to the rhetoric of the principle of vertical subsidiarity.
In this case as well the existing contextual regulatory conditions influenced
the timing of the reforms often in a path-dependent direction.14 In fact, if
we take a more nuanced perspective, we see that the timing of changes differed from country to country, for instance Scandinavian countries started
the process of explicit decentralisation earlier (even in the 1960s), Italy and
Spain in the 1970s, even though consequences started to be felt in the 1980s.
Poland started the process of multilevel institutional building incorporating
a strong decentralised architecture after joining the European Union in 2004
(Staręga-Piasek et al., 2006). The same differentiation of dynamics took place
for the different policy areas according to the characteristics of the respective
context of regulation and the overall business cycle. We will consider these
aspects more in depth in the single policy area chapters and transversally
in Chapter 11.15 An interesting example which clarifies the importance of
considering a contextual and multidimensional approach to the study of
rescaling processes within social policies comes from the changing degrees
of centralisation-decentralisation of the financial relations among territorial
levels. In the 1990s most reforms aimed at increasing the overall financial
autonomy of sub-national levels of government both in terms of revenues,
fostering their own taxation (Stegarescu, 2005: 301) and, in terms of expendi14
15
Path dependency is usually considered intrinsic to institutions as they constrain choice to
a limited range of possible alternatives, reducing the probability of path changes and
presenting an evolutionary tendency, “a system of nested rules, which are increasingly
costly to change” (Goodin, 1996: 23) which produces a self-reinforcing effect over time.
On the importance of considering time in social policy analysis see also: Pierson (2000),
Fargion (2000) and more recently Bonoli (2007).
45
Yuri Kazepov
ture, increasing the costs to be covered by local resources. Both these trends
implied a converging reduction of the existing differences of the degree of
financial decentralisation16 (see Table 1) (Thieben, 2003; Martinez-Vazquez
and Timofeev, 2009) potentially hinting at both a neoliberalisation process
implicit in the off-loading process of state financial responsibility (Keating,
1998; Ferrera, 2005) and an empowering process implicit in the development
of local control over local resources.
Table 1:
Financial decentralisation in selected European countries, 1974-2000
!"#$$%&%#'()"$
*+,%+(%"'-
!"#$
DK
FIN
NO
SE
DE
CH
FR
ES
IT
UK
PL
1974 37,40 0.40 0.33 0.39 0.41 0.38 0.44 0.15 0.15 0.12 0.23 0.212
2000 30,20 0.44 0.33 0.30 0.41 0.39 0.39 0.20 0.27 0.24 0.14 0.27
%
46
&'()* *(*+ *(** &*(*, *(** *(*- &*(*. *(*. *(-) *(-) &*(*, /*(*0
Trend3
2006
+/-
––
–
––
––
+/ –
+/ –
+
++
++
––
++
+ = More decentralisation
– = Less decentralisation
Source: Source: Own calculations on International Monetary Fund (IMF) Data (1972-2002).
1) The coefficient of variation considers all countries except Poland.
2) Data on Poland refer to 1985 and 2000 respectively.
3) According to the analysis of the reforms considered in the Rescaling Project.
The consequences of these trends, despite their apparent convergence, are
complex to decipher because a high share of sub-national taxation does
not necessarily correspond to a high degree of sub-national autonomy in
both defining taxes and expenditure targets. The latter might be strictly
regulated by national/federal criteria, which heavily structure and restrict
sub-national autonomy (OECD, 2006a; Martinez-Vazquez and Timofeev,
2009). The same is true for sub-national expenditure, which might change
16
The degree of financial decentralisation is usually calculated considering the share of
sub-national expenditure in the total public expenditure and the share of sub-national
taxes in the total fiscal revenues at the national level. In our case, we have considered
four indicators: 1) the share of sub-national expenditure in the total national expenditure; 2) the share of sub-national expenditure in the GDP; 3) the share of sub-national
taxes in the total sub-national revenues; 4) the sub-national taxes as a percentage of total
taxes. For each country, the total score has been standardised, i.e. 0 = total absence of
decentralisation; 1= total decentralisation.
according to specific measures within single policy areas as well (on this,
the single chapters of the first part offer a more precise insight). In order to
understand these changes it is, therefore, necessary to embed them in the
regulatory frames which define how specific budgetary items are funded
and spent in the different welfare systems. This has to be done in particular
considering the territorial dimension of social policy regulatory jurisdictions, identifying “who pays” for what kind of provision at which level.
When we have taken that into account, it will no longer be counterintuitive
to realise that the most decentralised countries are also the countries with
lowest income inequality (see Table 5 below). The institutional meso-level
of analysis helps us in that exercise. It also helps us throughout all chapters,
to disentangle the ways in which the reforms of the last decades have produced a quite diversified landscape characterised by complex interwoven
regulative powers on different scales and among different actors vis-à-vis
public-private lines of differentiation in the design, management and implementation of the policies themselves. Chapter 11 provides a precise and
transversal account on these aspects.
3
The multiplication of actors and New Governance
arrangements in social policies
The second process of change that the different welfare systems are facing is
represented by the multiplication of actors involved in designing, managing
and implementing social policies.
We can consider this a horizontal subsidiarisation process in which the
number and quality of actors involved increases in numbers and differentiates its tasks. The externalisation of social services (Dixon and Hyde, 2001),
the individualisation (Beck, 1998; Paci, 2007) of specific measures and – in
some cases – their privatisation (Dixon and Hyde, 2001) have been taking
place since the early 1980s. The aforesaid have strongly contributed to a
new role for private – both for-profit and non-profit – actors (Powell, 2007).
The spread of specific policies, like homecare services for the elderly (see
Chapter 8 herein) or activation policies for both unemployed and social assistance claimants (see Chapters 2 and 5 herein), have provided these new
actors with new tasks as well.
Generally speaking these processes tend to flatten the forms of coordination (see Chapter 12 herein) making the sub-national dimension (either
regional or municipal) a crucial territorial level not only for managing and
47
Yuri Kazepov
48
implementing social policies, but increasingly also for the definition of the
policy itself or of important parts of it. From this point of view, the vertical
and horizontal forms of subsidiarisation reinforce each other and develop
frames for action which are relatively coherent with the welfare systems
they belong to.
The arguments used to legitimise the involvement of new actors are
manifold and reflect the ambiguities we already highlighted for the rescaling process with which they are closely intertwined (Powell, 2007). From
the economic point of view, budgetary constraints played a major role in
supporting both the externalisation and privatisation of social services and
provisions. Quasi-markets providing a competitive frame for demand and
supply have been seen as a specific way of improving efficiency and effectiveness (McMaster, 2002) almost taking for granted the inevitable direction
of change: the neoliberalisation of social policies. This discourse (and actual
measures), however, have been paralleled by the spread of a participatory
rhetoric which viewed the involvement of civil society – strongly rooted
in the full deployment of the subsidiarity principle – as a necessary step to
empower the people in finding a solution to their own problems (Ranci, 2006;
Fung, 2003; Powell, 2007). A widespread opinion was – and partly still is –
that widening the range of actors would increase the legitimacy of the policymaking process (Hirst, 1993). From this perspective, externalisation might
support a general reorganisation of the decision-making process involving
various stakeholders at different levels, underlining improvements in the
empowerment process of civil society broadly conceived (Paci, 2007).
Both rhetoric coexist and co-evolve. The involvement of new actors was
initially related merely to the implementation of social services and their
management. Only in recent years has their role shifted to planning and
the co-definition of goals. All that determined a re-definition of the policymaking process, the spread of new models of governance in the management
of social policies and a shift from a hierarchical-vertical regulation towards
a more cooperative-horizontal one.
This re-definition of the policy-making process requires new state capacities aimed at supporting the transition from a government function of
a democratically elected body towards a form of governance, in which the
public actor aims at facilitating and coordinating the implementation of
policies (see Chapter 12 herein). This occurs within a frame in which the
discussion about social policy design, its management and implementation
takes place in increasingly fragmented and uncertain contexts, characterised
by a high degree of negotiation among the actors involved.
As a reaction to the crisis of the welfare state, reform processes – in
their double meaning of vertical and horizontal subsidiarisation – produced
a steady shift from a vertical towards a horizontal coordination of social
policies, which finds its ideal level of implementation in the local dimension.17 Despite the fact that these tendencies are common to most European
countries, the development and institutionalisation of the new governance
arrangements do not converge. On the contrary, the results of these processes
of change seem to produce a territorially structured diversification (see
Chapter 11 herein). This diversification varies according to socio-economic
context and institutional arrangements, with all the specificities this might
entail: from a high degree of freedom of the Comunidades Autonomas in Spain,
the Länder in Germany or the Kantons in Switzerland, to the relatively low
intra-national differentiation in France.
DiGaetano and Strom (2003) emphasise the fact that these different
institutional contexts favour specific governance arrangements at the local
level; that is to say: formal and informal rules actors build and follow, developing practices and networks, attempting to contribute – in one way
or another – to the stability and dynamics of the local society and political
regime (Le Galès, 2002: 15). Other scholars have gone beyond the local dimension, witnessing how the emerging governance arrangements are quite in
line with the respective national welfare systems they belong to, following a
path-dependent logic which tends to pre-structure the diversified outcome of
the current processes of change (Jessop, 2002; Kazepov, 2005). In this sense,
reform processes do not occur in an institutional vacuum, but are deeply
rooted in the institutional settings of the individual countries which influence – through context-specific constraints and opportunities – the directions
of change. Welfare systems and their functioning are therefore an excellent
perspective in which to frame our understanding of the subsidiarisation
processes of social policies and their impact.
4
Rescaling and governance in European welfare systems:
a comparative perspective
Understanding the processes of subsidiarisation of social policies cannot
avoid considering what the main features of European welfare systems are.
These very features and the underlying regulative principles do translate
the common transformation processes into context-specific outcomes and
17
For an in-depth analysis of the differences among single policy areas see the thematic
sections of the book and the transversal chapters of the second part.
49
Yuri Kazepov
50
practices which influence the allocation of resources and responsibilities in
the different countries and sub-national territories. As Pawson and Tilley
(1997) put it, the right equation is: “context+reforms=outcomes”.
Following the legacy of Karl Polanyi’s seminal work, The Economy as
Instituted Process (1957), in the last few decades the debate on welfare systems
has been revitalised by Esping-Andersen (1990 and 1999) who, taking up the
contributions by Titmuss (1958), as well connected regulatory principles to
specific policies, in particular he related: a) the principle of redistribution to
universalistic policies; b) the principle of exchange to liberal market-oriented
policies; c) the principle of reciprocity to policies based on family responsibility. We can further specify this responsibility by distinguishing active or
passive forms of subsidiarity.18 Both forms share the importance of the family, of third-sector actors, voluntary associations, etc. in the overall welfare
system. They differ, however, in relation to the resources that are socially
targeted to these actors. Active subsidiarity implies shifts in responsibilities
and of “adequate” resources to fulfil these responsibilities (e.g. child care,
care of the elderly, ...). Passive subsidiarity just shifts responsibilities without
providing and redistributing resources.
The recent debate focused both on the number of existing models and
the underlying regulatory principles, as well as on the kind of indicators to
be considered in the taxonomic exercise. The literature on this issue is quite
diversified19 and most authors propose – implicitly or explicitly – a classification based on the balance among different regulatory principles and
the way in which the respective institutions socialise risks. In particular, the
country-specific equilibrium among the state, the family (plus the third sector)
and the market (Esping-Andersen, 1990; Mingione, 1997; Ascoli and Ranci,
2002) contributes to ways in which the allocation of resources is defined. In
doing so, this process shapes the constraints and opportunities actors face
in defining their life strategies. Within this context, the state (through the
rule-of-law) plays a major role, because it also defines – implicitly or explicitly – the role of the other institutions. In fact, by defining access criteria and
the generosity of provisions as well as taxation duties, the state not only
allocates resources to specific groups, but implicitly (and functionally) also
18
19
I have introduced the distinction between active and passive subsidiarity in order to make
the reference to subsidiarity more precise in Garcia and Kazepov (2002).
Among the many contributions see: Esping-Andersen (1990, 1999); Ferrera (1998); Mingione (1997); Bambra (2006). For an overview see Art and Glissen (2002). For labour
market-related policies see: Gallie and Paugam (2000). For spatially-related implications
see: Kazepov (2005).
distributes the responsibilities in the production of well-being to the other
institutions, be it the market (through commodification) or the family (through
familialisation) (Esping-Andersen, 1999).
Taking into account these guiding principles and perspectives European scholars identified “four-plus-one” main welfare systems, which allow
us to allocate most European countries: the liberal/Anglosaxon welfare system,
the social democratic/Scandinavian welfare system, the corporatist/Continental
welfare system, the familistic/South European welfare system and the welfare
system of transition countries/Central and Eastern European. We are of course
aware of the fact that the picture is always more complex than models can
reproduce (Crouch, 2005), but the modelling business (Abrahamson, 1999) –
if it is not abused – might help to interprete the directions of social policy
change and provide a frame of reference beyond the Keynesian-Fordist
perspective to a more nuanced analysis of ad hoc measures within specific
policy areas. The aforesaid is precisely what this book intends to do.
One of the main problems of the conceptualisation of these systems,
however, is related to the fact that it does not consider the spatial dimension or specific actors’ configurations. Our attempt is, therefore, to start a
line of research which tentatively tries to show the privileged relationship
existing between the diverse scale arrangements and actors’ configurations
in the different welfare systems. Both dimensions are intimately related
to one another, as the analysis of the vertical organisation of powers and
the institutional frame within which actors and single policy measures are
embedded, define actors’ degrees of freedom. These factors subsequently
influence the ways in which they interact and coordinate in the policy process. Agency is – from this point of view – never free-floating: it is always
embedded within a specific institutional frame of reference providing both
opportunities and constraints (Giddens, 1984; Jessop, 2002 and 2008; Le
Galès, 2004; Kazepov, 2005).
Considering these aspects we have identified four main spatial configurations, which are taken up in most chapters of the book. These are the
result of our attempt to put forward a meso-level analysis by combining
macro and micro sources and referring to structural indicators as well as to
the results of institutional micro-simulations20 we carried out. In fact, the
20
Information on the macro characteristics refers to both literature review and structural
data we collected within the Rescaling project (OECD, Eurostat, ... but also institutional
analyses). Information on the micro characteristics refers to targeted interviews we carried out with experts, social workers, policy-makers, etc. to reconstruct the institutional
frame for the vignettes (see methodological appendix for details).
51
Yuri Kazepov
spatial configurations and the actors’ arrangements we are reporting are the
result of an aggregated systematisation of information in which qualitative
and quantitative data as well as primary and secondary sources have been
considered in order to understand and re-construct the contexts within which
rescaling processes and new governance arrangements are taking place
and co-evolving. A brief comparative sketch based on data also contained
in Table 2 might help in highlighting the existing differences, which will be
synthesised in Figure 3 and Table 3 at the end of this section.
1)
The Liberal welfare system is characterised by a relatively residual role of
the state, which intervenes only when both the market and the family have
failed in allocating resources. The market is the prevailing mechanism
of regulation and integration in a highly individualised (see position
on the y axis in Figure 1) and competitive society. The main example of
this model is represented by the US, where the importance of welfare
policies is extremely limited and follows, eventually, a form of privatised
Keynesianism21 (Crouch, 2008), with all consequences it might hold in
terms of the individualisation of risks and responsibilities. Among the
European countries, the United Kingdom is the closest one to this model,
even though some substantial differences exist, due to the legacy of the
Beveridgian welfare state and the relatively developed social services.
Poverty and inequality rates are, nevertheless, among the highest in
Europe (see no. 23-26, Table 2) and social policies – often means-tested
– assumed, after the long period in power of the Conservative government (1979-1997), a rather negative image (Rodney, 2004). Generosity
and adequacy of income support levels are at an intermediate position (see the differences between the US and UK position on the x axis
in Figure 3), i.e. lower than in Scandinavian countries, but definitely
higher than in South-European ones. From the territorial point of view,
social policies are centrally framed and differentiation at the sub-national
level occurs more in relation to activation policies and to the related local
governance arrangements (for training, stages, social insertion,…); furthermore, is mainly market-driven (Lindsay, 2007). This, however, does
not translate into high regional dispersion rates for both employment
and unemployment. Welfare benefits and other income support meas-
21
Crouch distinguishes Keynesianism – in which it was governments that took on debt to
stimulate the economy – from privatised Keynesianism in which it is “individuals, particularly poor ones, [that] took on that role by incurring debt on the market” (Crouch,
2008: 476).
52
ures per se are also more or less managed homogeneously throughout
the country, but the joint PES and Benefits agency management of the
New Deal is increasingly fragmented and depends very much on the
resources available locally. The latter are, in turn, related to the degree of
competitiveness that regions and cities can achieve in the market (Buck
et al., 2005). The governance arrangements developed within this welfare system tend to be, from this point of view, pluralist and managerial,
that means coordinating an increasing number of public-private actors
and prioritising efficiency – through forms of new public management
(NPM) – over equality. In more recent years a whole-of-government approach has been put forward in order to go beyond NPM and to work
across fragmented policy areas in order to achieve a shared goal and
an integrated response to particular issues (Christensen and Lægreid,
2007: 1060). Despite successful targeting and efficient poverty reduction,
the incidence of poverty and income inequality is higher than in other
European countries (see indicator no. 26 in Table 2). Unfortunately our
study could not include the UK case.22
2)
The Social democratic welfare system is characterised by a pervasive role
of the state which takes over responsibilities that other welfare systems
delegate to the family or the market. Measures are mostly universalistic,
addressed to all citizens according to need. A wide range of in-kind
services and monetary transfers is provided, and redistribution is the
most important form of allocation, even if in the last decades some
second-level insurance-based schemes have been introduced in this
system. Market dependency, poverty and inequality are the lowest
not only in the EU but also in the world (Ervik and Kuhnle, 1996;
Kangas and Palme, 2005; Greve, 2007). Adequacy of income support
measures is a fact and local differentiation tends to decrease, except
for social assistance and activation measures, which depend on local
political and economic contexts. The debate over the consequences of
this territorial differentiation, however, kicked-off a trend aiming at
homogenising standards in most Scandinavian countries (e.g. Sweden
in 1998, Finland in 2001 and Norway in 2005. See also the chapters
herein for details on the single policy areas). From the point of view
of the territorial organisation of social policies, these countries are,
therefore, characterised by what we can describe as a local autonomy
22
On the Rescaling project’s methods, data sources, format and management, see the Appendix by Barberis herein.
53
4
5
6
5
5
6
3
11
10
9
8
22) SA for 1 (PPP)
12
21) Active Labour policies
20) Labour policies
19) Elderly/survivors
10
10
18) Family/children
17) As % on GDP
16) Per capita in PPS
Social expenditure
15) Unemployed covered
14) Dispersion NUTS-2
13) Long term (15-64)
12) Youth (15-24)
5
11) Female (15-64)
10) Male (55-64)
7
9) Male (15-64)
5
Unemployment rates
8) Dispersion NUTS-2
7) Youth (15-24)
5
6) Female (15-64)
5) Male (15-64)
5
Employment rates
4) Divorce
3) Births out of wedlock
2) Fertility rate
2
11
1) Child in single parent family
Population
1
11,9
0,61
463
964
0,42
1,11
0,43
43,8
6,0
26,4
7410
26,2
24,8
23,8
14,3
5,0
4,1
5,6
5,4
52,9
65,5
77,5
2,6
43,6
1,84
24,0
43,2
8,6
22,4
4585
n.a.
33,9
41,9
17,5
7,8
8,4
12,1
7,5
54,9
60,8
73,9
2,7
27,9
1,83
2007
812
1,68
2,56
36,5
11,7
37,4
6187
n.a.
29,6
15,5
25,6
7,3
1,3
10,7
4,8
37,3
73,1
73,0
2,3
47,0
2,13
n.a.
1990
616!
1,36
2,32
39,3
9,6
30,7
8998
87,0
10,1
13,8
18,6
6,4
4,3
5,8
2,4
42,2
71,8
76,5
2,2
54,7
1,85
n.a.
2007
Sweden
1990
Social-Democratic
UK
348!
0,72
2,09
40,7
9,7
27,3
5159
n.a.
24,1
35,0
24,5
12,9
6,0
9,5
7,1
27,6
51,5
67,3
2,1
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
1990
362!
0,92
2,32
41,6
8,1
31,1
8200
47,0
35,2
40,2
18,7
8,9
5,3
7,8
6,6
31,5
60,0
69,3
2,5
50,5
2,00
14,0
2007
France
Corporative
54
Liberal
The welfare systems in Europe, 1990-2007
Welfare systems
Table 2:
322
n.a.
n.a.
55,1
4,2
24,0
4289
n.a.
68,9
57,7
28,2
13,9
1,6
7,4
17,4
28,3
35,8
69,3
0,5
6,4
1,33
3,3
1990
Italy
375
0,53
1,32
58,3
4,3
26,6
6476
4,4
56,7
47,4
20,3
7,9
2,6
4,9
16,3
24,7
46,6
70,7
0,8
20,7
1,32
6,0
2007
Familistic
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
22,5
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
7,5
n.a.
4,8
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
1,1
9,4
1,62
n.a.
1990
n.a.
0,45
1,18
59,9
4,3
19,2
2373
n.d.
14,2
51,3
21,7
10,4
7,4
9,0
4,5
25,8
50,6
63,6
1,8
19,4
1,27
9,0
2007
Poland
In Transition
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
6,1
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
1,7
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
1990
EU-25
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
44,4
7,7
27,0
6630
n.a.
n.a.
42,2
15,1
7,9
5,5
6,6
n.a.
38,3
58,6
73,0
2,1
n.a.
n.a.
13,0
2007
Yuri Kazepov
14
32,0
37,5
20,0
32,0
33,0
36,7
19,0
30,0
2007
21,0
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
1990
23,0
60,7
11,0
28,0
2007
Sweden
UK
1990
Social-Democratic
Liberal
29,0
42,3
15,0
26,0
1990
23,0
20,0
13,0
33,0
26,0
13,0
50,0
26,0
24,0
32,0
16,7
20,0
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
1990
32,0
37,0
17,0
27,0
2007
Poland
2007
Italy
1990
In Transition
Familistic
2007
France
Corporative
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
1990
EU-25
30,0
38,5
16,0
26,0
2007
n.a. = not available.
1
Last year: 2005. Source: Eurostat in Kazepov (2005, pp.16-17); Eurostat (2006).
2
Last year: 2006. For PL, first year: 1995. For IT, last year: 2005. Source: Eurostat (2009), on-line: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/
3
For PL, first year: 1995. For UK and FR, last year: 2006. Source: Eurostat (2009), on-line: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/
4
For FR, first year: 1995. For all, last year: 2005. Fonte: Eurostat (2009), on-line: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/
5
First year: 1993. Source: Eurostat (2009), on-line: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/
6
Dispersion at NUTS-2 level of total employment rate and unemployment rate. First year: 1999. Source: Eurostat (2009), on-line: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/
7
For PL, first year: 1994. For EU-25, considered: EU-15. Source: OECD (2009), on-line: http://webnet.oecd.org/wbos/index.aspx
8
Unemployed covered by unemployment benefits, 2001. Source: Carbone (2005, p.71).
9
In some cases, provisional data. First year: 1995. Last year: 2006. Source: Eurostat (2009), on-line: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/
10
In some cases, provisional data. For S, first year: 1993. For all, last year: 2006. Source: Eurostat (2009), on-line: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/
11
Incidence (%) of expenditure in labour market policies (both total and active) on GDP. Last year: 2006. Source: OECD (2009), on-line: http://webnet.oecd.org/wbos/index.aspx
12
Social Assistance for one single person per month. PPP = purchasing power parities (Euro = 1). Years considered 1992 and 2001. Source: Cantillon (2006) Minimum Income
Protection in Europe..
13
Incidence (%) of persons with available equivalent income, pre and post social transfers, under the relative poverty line (established at 60% of the equivalent median national
income). In some cases, provisional data. First year: 1995. Source: Eurostat (2009), on-line: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/
14
Own calculation taking into account two indicators (23 and 24), according to the following formula: [(23-24)/(23)*100].
15
In some cases, provisional data. For all, first year: 1995 (except S = 1997). Source: Eurostat (2009), on-line: http://epp.eurostat.ec.europa.eu/.
26) Gini Index
15
25) redistributive capacity
13
13
24) 60% median post-transfers
23) 60% median pre-transfers
Poverty and income
Welfare systems
55
Yuri Kazepov
centrally framed system. This implies that the high autonomy that municipalities retain in managing and funding policies is embedded in a
nationally defined regulatory context, which contributes – through the
direct provision of many benefits and services – to keeping territorial
differentiation under control. Sellers and Lidström call it nationalised
local government (2007: 622). Recent trends confirm the importance of the
central state (see Figure 2.a for the Finnish case), even though through
coordination and steering activities rather than hierarchical control.
Income inequality and poverty before taxes and transfers is relatively
high, after taxes however it becomes the lowest in Europe (see indicators
no. 23-26, Table 2). This reduction is the result of generous transfers and
the highest share of the national GDP allocated (see indicators no. 16-17,
Table 2) to social expenditure, combined with an effective redistributive
capacity of the welfare system. Income transfers like child and family
allowances, unemployment benefits (all nationally regulated), and inkind services keep large parts of the population well above the poverty
line. As a consequence, this welfare model maintains a high degree of
social consensus, as both social and economic results are positive.
56
Figure 2.a: Local autonomy centrally framed: Finland 1990-2005
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Around 1990
Mid 1990s
&'()*$%
Around 2000
+,-
!"#$%
Mid 2000
In this scenario, governance is regulated both by managerial (looking for
efficiency) but also participative (also involving claimants) arrangements
in which central public authorities, rather than private non- or for-profit
actors, play a major role and self-coordinate. Reforms in recent years
have been approved in order to keep social expenditure under control,
but the overall system configuration is – viewed comparatively – still
the most generous and encompassing.
3)
The Corporatist welfare system is characterised by social policies conceived in a meritocratic way: contributory schemes reproduce the socioeconomic status that families achieve in the labour market through the
position of the breadwinner (Gallie and Paugam, 2000). The family is
the prevailing social agency and, coherently with this, it is strongly
supported in its caring role by specific targeted in-kind and monetary
state provisions (active subsidiarity). Reciprocity is an important form
of integration and allocation of resources (see its position on the “y”
axis in Figure 3). In fact, even though the state intervenes extensively,
this intervention is mediated by the role of the family. Dependency on
the market is higher than in the social-democratic model, but lower
than in the liberal one. Bismarckian Germany with Austria, France and
Belgium are clear examples of this welfare system. From the territorial
point of view these countries present quite diversified organisation of
models ranging from federal state structures (e.g. Germany, Belgium
or Switzerland) – that are regionally framed – to national ones, which
are centrally framed (e.g. France). Countries with regionally framed social
policies often have the exclusive legislative responsibility allocated
to regions, Kantons or Länder and a great potential for differentiation.
However, this potential is often kept under control through forms of
institutional isomorphism (DiMaggio and Powell, 1983), i.e. through the
de facto mutual adaptation of institutional solutions. In countries with
centrally framed social policies, on the contrary, benefits and provisions
as well as procedures are regulated and funded at the national level.
Only the activation of the RMI claimants is fully up to the Départements,
but again in a centrally defined frame. Despite this important difference,
there is a converging tendency towards forms of intermediate regulation
between the national-federal level and municipalities. In Germany it is
the Länder, while in Switzerland the Kantons and in France (in particular
since 2003) the Départements. In most cases it is national standards which
57
Yuri Kazepov
often bind or direct welfare provisions; for this reason the redistributive
effects of social policies are relatively high (see indicators no. 23-26 in
Table 2).
Figure 2.b: Centrally framed: France 1990-2005
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
58
1
0
Around 1990
Mid 1990s
&'()*$%
Around 2000
+,-
Mid 2000
!"#$%
Figure 2.c: Regionally framed: Switzerland 1990-2005
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Around 1990
Mid 1990s
&'()*$%
Around 2000
+,-
!"#$%
Mid 2000
This downward regulatory convergence does not mean that the central
state has lost regulative capacity in France, but that the institutional
landscape becomes more articulated (see the level of state intervention
which remained high throughout the last 25 years, Figure 2.b). Unlike
France, Switzerland (and Belgium) presents a higher level of differentiation and a wider share of options. Figure 2.c shows the basis for this
variation very clearly: throughout the last 25 years Kantons have kept
their crucial regulative role, coherent with the federal frame of reference.
However, in-kind measures may vary more (like activation measures,
see Chapter 4 herein), but we have to consider that this variation takes
place within a frame of relatively well-guaranteed rights and generous
benefits (see Chapter 2 herein). Governance is regulated by corporative
arrangements with strong relevance of negotiation among intermediate
(often non-profit) bodies and public authorities. Some participative and/
or managerial arrangements might characterise sub-national contexts,
varying according to the local political culture. In the scholarly literature,
this model is often conflated with the familistic one (Esping-Andersen,
1990, 1999). Indeed, they share the double logic underlying the way in
which social risks are managed. Contributory-based benefits on one
hand, and the subsidiarity principle regulating the relationship between
the state and the family or the subsidiary actors on the other. However,
the role of the state is quite relevant in making the difference in terms
of generosity (see indicators no. 16-17, Table 2) and services23 provided,
defining a relatively high degree of inclusiveness into the respective
redistributive communities.
4)
The Familistic welfare system, like the corporatist model, conceives social
policies in a meritocratic and fragmented way, but it is less generous and
very unbalanced in the provision of monetary benefits, which prevail
over in-kind services (Naldini and Saraceno, 2008). Fewer resources
are targeted to family policies and to other contributory and meanstested schemes. The consequence is that the family is overloaded with
social caring responsibilities without, or with very few institutional
resources provided by the state (Naldini, 2003) (see Figure 1 and the
high scores of the familism index ) bringing about forms of passive sub-
23
The ideological frames which historically influenced the development of social policies
in the two models differ as well. The catholic culture in the Mediterranean countries
and the monarchical statism rooted in a Bismarckian approach in continental European
countries set the stage for the institutionalisation of the deep differences (Alber, 1982;
Manow, 2004).
59
Yuri Kazepov
sidiarity. These aspects contribute to the segmentation of the labour
market in terms of gender and age granting a higher protection to the
(often male) breadwinner and slowing down generational turnover. All
South-European countries (IT, ES, PT, GR) show a low redistributive
capacity (indicators no. 23-25, Table 2) and fewer services, exacerbating – in a context of low incomes – social inequalities. The latter have
a strong territorial dimension, in particular in Spain and Italy. In fact,
despite strong postwar centralism, since the second half of the 1970s
both countries have shifted a great deal of regulatory capacity to their
regions. Policies are therefore, at the territorial level, regionally framed to
a large extent, highly segmented and targeted at particular categories.
Unlike corporatist welfare system countries, regional differentiation
does not take place within a frame of relatively well guaranteed rights.
On the contrary, it might be even more fragmented, as in the Italian
case, i.e. drifting towards very localist variants. Figure 2.d clearly shows
the deep changes which have occurred from the territorial point of
view in Italy, with the regions becoming the main actors in most of
the policies we considered. The dependency on the market resembles
the liberal model, with the exception that families extensively reduce
this dependency (through low divorce rates, few single households,
60
Figure 2.d: Regionally framed: Italy 1990-2005
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Around 1990
Mid 1990s
&'()*$%
Around 2000
+,-
!"#$%
Mid 2000
etc., see indicators no. 1-4, Table 2). In general, the level of benefits is
much lower and local measures and formal entitlements do not always guarantee a payout. Local differentiation and the discretionary
power of social workers are much more widespread because of heavy
budgetary constraints. Reforms in Portugal and Spain at the end of
the 1990s attempted to modernise social assistance schemes, connecting them to national framework laws and RMI-like schemes, but they
failed in homogenising access criteria and provision. This is true, in
particular, for activation (or insertion) policies and the respective governance arrangements involved, which are in many cases regulated
by particularistic and – sometimes clientelistic-oriented by patronage
relations – principles with a strong place for private (also non-profit)
interests. The typical territorial fragmentation is also reflected in the
co-existence of different forms of governance from innovative participatory ones (in progressive regions) to more traditional corporatist forms
of interest mediation (in regions with a strong industrial legacy). There
is, however, no legally enforceable social right. Income inequalities
and poverty rates are higher than in the other European countries. The
familistic welfare system is unable to adequately redistribute resources
and to prevent poverty. As a matter of fact, poverty rates before and after
social transfers in Italy show the lowest capacity to reduce the number
of low-income families among the countries considered in Table 2 (see
indicators no. 23-26).
5)
The welfare system in transition countries is not yet a consolidated model
with clear characteristics. Both the conditions producing vulnerability
and the institutional frame aimed at contrasting them have experienced
a dramatic change since 1989. Most Central European and East European countries belonging to this model underwent a deep structural
change in the economy with sharp GDP decreases followed by high
increases. The reforms implemented in the last decade to accompany
these changes and to contrast their potentially negative impact have
had ambivalent consequences. Countries like Poland, for example, give
a more important role to market regulation (Staręga-Piasek et al., 2006),
while others like Slovenia are investing more in coordinated market
and social policies. The starting basis, however, is a quite homogeneous
distribution of income with – in most cases – below-average inequalities
and strong central control. Yet, the dynamic of change and the impact
61
Yuri Kazepov
of the policies adopted in the last decade will bring about consequences
in the coming years, most probably causing a hybridisation of models (Hacker, 2009). The first signals are coming from the greater (e.g.
Slovenia, Czech Republic) or lesser (e.g. Slovakia) ability of policy
transfers to reduce the risk-of-poverty rates significantly (Atkinson
et al., 2002). Moreover, becoming part of the European Union was for
these countries, even before 2005, an important input for reforming
social policies towards institutional designs closer to those of other
continental European countries (Cerami, 2006; Fenger, 2007; Aspalter
et al., 2009). Changes in the territorial organisation of social policies
and in the governance arrangements follow the heterogeneous lines
existing in Europe and provide examples of all forms of territorial
rescaling dynamics and interaction among actors delineating for these
countries a transitional mixed model. From this point of view, Poland is
undergoing a heavy territorial re-organisation of social policies, away
from central regulation towards more decentralised levels, configuring
complex multilevel arrangements which differ from policy to policy
(see Figure 2.e). Other countries have kept a stronger central control.
Poland also seems more oriented towards forms of competitive pluralism and privatisation (where regional variation occurs vis-à-vis some
62
Figure 2.e: Mixed in transition: Poland 1990-2005
9
8
7
6
5
4
3
2
1
0
Around 1990
Mid 1990s
&'()*$%
Around 2000
+,-
!"#$%
Mid 2000
degree of national regulation and responsibility); other countries, like
Slovenia and the Czech Republic, have adopted more corporative solutions with concerted decision-making processes.
The social model which seems to emerge from these short descriptions
sees the “family” and the actors from civil society (the voluntary sector, ...)
on one side and the “state” on the other as the main agencies that socialise
individual risks, transforming them into social responsibilities. In the first
case regulatory principles based on subsidiarity and reciprocity prevail. In
the second case redistributive principles prevail. If we consider the “family”
(and civil society) and the “state” as two extremes of a continuum, we need
to distinguish between passive subsidiarity – which characterises countries
in which the state delegates social responsibilities without allocating adequate resources to the actors who take over the burden and responsibility
to act – and active subsidiarity in which the state targets specific resources
in favour of the actors which take over social responsibilities, intervening
in relation to specific needs (e.g. care, training, economic support, …). This
distinction intersects with the distinction between vertical and horizontal
subsidiarity and allows us to take into account the differences existing between continental welfare systems and south-European ones, providing
some indications for interpreting the complex changes taking place in the
welfare systems in transition.
Figure 3 synthesises what has been briefly sketched out so far using
as a proxy two rather rough but helpful indexes: a familism index and a
statism index.24 Cross-tabulating the two indexes, the European social models
clearly emerge: in Europe it is either the family or the state which take on
social responsibilities. This alternative is not without effects on the rescaling processes and the new governance arrangements, as the family lacks
the state’s redistributive capacity and provides the ground for increasing
inequalities among territories and actors if not adequately backed up by
the state’s intervention with ad hoc equalisation funds (as it is the case in
24
The familism index has been calculated considering 5 indicators: 1) Single parent households, as % of all households with children, 2005; 2) Divorce rate, per 1000 inhabitants,
2004; 3) Births out of wedlock, as % of the total live births, 2004; 4) Young males (1834) living with parents, 2003; 5) Young females (18-34) living with parents, 2003. The
statism index has been calculated considering 4 indicators: 1) Differential between the
at-risk-of-poverty rate before and after social transfers, 2003; 2) Social expenditure, as
% of GDP, 2002; 3) Social expenditure in PPS per capita, 2002; 4) Total taxes as % of
GDP 2003. Source: Arlotti calculations on Eurostat figures (online statistics http://epp.
eurostat.ec.europa.eu); OECD (2005); European Foundation (2005). All variables have
been standardised.
63
Yuri Kazepov
countries characterised by active subsidiarity) or centrally framed policies. It is
indeed the state’s intervention which provides a key element in differentiating both vertical and horizontal subsidiarity in a qualitative and quantitative
manner. This holds true for the role of the third sector as well.
Figure 3:
The role of redistribution and family
y
Family
IT
GR
ES
High
Fa
amilism!index
Reciprrocity!networks
64
PL
PT
NL
HU
AT
CZ
DE
FR
BE
Low
SF
US
UK
DK
(Market)
Low
State
Redistributive!Institutions
High
x
Statism index
Statism!index
Analysing elderly care, Ascoli and Ranci (2002) provide some comparative
empirical evidence of the role that third sector actors retain in different
welfare systems (see Table 3).
We can use their results as a useful proxy to frame our understanding of
the role of multiple actors in social policy delivery. Of course considering not
just delivery, but also design and management might change the balance and
the specific policy chapters herein offer more details on these actors’ roles.
The scheme, however, is useful because it grounds its classification on how
the role of third sector actors intersects with the actual resources allocated
and complements well the territorial dimension of social policies.
It is a major challenge to try to consider these elements altogether and
the analytical distinction between institutional design, the actual management of the specific policies and their delivery on both the vertical and
horizontal dimension helps us – in the different chapters – to fine-tune our
understanding of the changes that have occurred so far.
Table 3:
Third sector actors’ involvement models in European welfare systems
!./"/0."1)02345"64)78)9:4)#9"94
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$:.5C)#40925
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'2D./"/9
;<)E>?@
(25F25"9.34))*2C41
,09.34)GH7G.C."5.98
(8*#,%#.#,"501+/*2.'
%"59."1);A)=>?@
SI
!"D.1.G9.0)D2C41
%"GG.34)GH7G.C."5.98)
(
()*+,-./#01+/*2.'
BG
RO
PL
65
(2DF14D4/9"58
;A)E>?@
)/.345G"1.G9.0
*2C41)C2D./"94C)
78)9:4)G9"94
."!"#$%#"&%"'
+421.745"1)D"5I9)
D2C41
(3#45*6"7*#'
Source: Own adaptation from Ranci (2003).
5
The pros and cons of the subsidiarisation process of social policies: some reflections on differences in Europe
Considering the fact that different institutional contexts tend to pre-structure
both the impact of the rescaling processes and the role of the new actors as well
as the directions of change, in this section I would like to provide a synthetic
account of the pros and cons emerging from these processes in more general
terms. Meanwhile the policy area chapters will carry the burden of addressing
these aspects and their implications in a more ad hoc and precise way. Both
are potentially present, and the prevalence of one or the other depends on
the meaning they acquire within the specific contexts examined.
The pros are mainly related to the new role that the local dimension and
non-state actors are gaining while increasingly being involved in designing,
managing and implementing social policies. In particular, we can highlight
the following positive aspects:
Yuri Kazepov
a)
66
the widening of local experimentation: the options during which new (and
old) actors and territories can find (together) new and coordinated
solutions to old problems have increased (Mouleart et al., 2007; Drewe
et al., 2008: 22) transforming the local level into a social laboratory (Le
Galès, 2002; Kazepov, 2005) in which to explore new land.
b) More freedom for grass-roots action: more local experimentation also
allows the valorisation of existing differences and the development
of bottom-linked socially innovative strategies, combining passive and
active measures in tailored solutions which could foster social justice
and contribute to a better redistribution of resources (Garcia et al.,
2008).
c) The legitimation of political choice: involving local actors no longer only
in the implementation of social policies but increasingly also in the
decision-making process, legitimises those political choices which impact on the very same actors and territories, by building trust among
them and facilitating mutually adjusting compromises.
The cons are related to the ways in which the territorial re-organisation of
social policies and the new governance arrangements modify the way in
which vulnerability and social risks are produced and institutionally addressed. In particular we can highlight the following critical issues:
a) the potential divergence among sub-national territories and the institutionalisation of their increasing disparities: the increasing localisation of the
decision-making processes tends not only to consolidate differentiated
practices, but also the development of differentiated regulations. This
legitimises the development of local models which might further differentiate along socio-economic cleavages, institutionalising uneven
treatment (see Chapter 11 herein);
b) the territorial coordination of the actors involved in the policy: the multiplication of both private and public actors at the different territorial levels
triggers the need for coordination and – at the same time – opens up
opportunities for discretion, for potential conflicts and policy implosion
(reciprocal vetoes, inability of taking relevant decisions, policy stagnation, ...) (see Chapter 12 herein);
c) the spread of blame-avoiding strategies implicit in rescaling processes: often
the reduction of financial transfers from the central government forces
subnational governments to raise local resources in order to finance
their own social programmes. This “decentralisation of penury” (Keat-
ing, 1998) has been driven not only by functional pressures but also by
political calculations. “Passing the buck” to sub-national governments
has the obvious advantage of shifting the blame for unpopular policies
of retrenchment onto local governments (Ferrera, 2005: 173-174);
d) the accountability of the decision-making process: the multiplication of
actors and their territorial fragmentation tends to weaken the democratic control over actors’ responsibilities within the decision-making
process, management and implementation (Crouch, 2003; DiGaetano
and Strom, 2003; Benz, 2007; Bovens, 2007; Brodkin, 2008).
These critical points are related to one another and might be summarised
by the risk of falling into the local trap of urban democracy (Purcell, 2006),
meaning the uncritical praise of subsidiarity and the tendency to assume a
priori that the local scale is preferable to other scales. However, the extent to
which this risk occurs in the different European countries and the forms it
takes depends on the interplay between the intra-national structural socioeconomic divides and the socio-political specificities and reforms, which
grant different degrees of freedom to territories and actors in a given country. Table 4 shows some of the striking differences existing in the European
countries considered in this book in terms of intra-national variations taking
place at the NUTS 2 level for some selected (mainly) labour market indicators. The total employment rates as well as female employment rates – for
instance – are evenly distributed in Scandinavian countries, while very
unevenly distributed in Southern Europe: Italy displays dispersion rates
that are 10 times higher than in Norway, just to mention the two extremes.
We do not go into the reasons for these differences, but we underline their
importance in channeling the impact of the processes of change.
If we want to assess the impact of rescaling and the multiplication of
actors we must, therefore, consider these degrees of variation and the way
they interact with the redistributive capacities of social policies and other
relevant contextual indicators we have presented in this introduction. The
chapters in the first part will do this by considering the three social policy
areas under investigation, while the chapters in the second part will address
some of the critical issues raised above considering these contextual elements
in a cross-country perspective. In synthesis, what we need to understand
is the synergic interplay between processes of change and the regulatory
contexts within which they take place: similar processes of change filtered
by different regulatory frameworks might produce divergent impacts (see
67
Yuri Kazepov
68
synopsis in the appendix to this chapter). As we have seen, within this frame,
sub-national bodies (municipalities, but most prominently regions) become
increasingly important. The strong accent that recent reforms have put on
devolution, decentralisation and active welfare policies has provided them
with new regulatory powers which, in a framework of overall fragmentation, have brought about the need for coordination of the increased number
of different actors. The degrees of autonomy regions (or other sub-national
bodies) have and the resources at their disposal, however, still depend very
much on the overall regulation at the national level. In fact, in most countries social policies retain a dual territorial nature which we should keep in
mind. They are both national and local: passive contributory-based policies
(e.g. unemployment benefits) are still mainly defined at the national level in
almost all countries considered, while activation policies and in-kind provisions are increasingly defined at the local level. It is for this very reason that
the nation-state’s influence on local policies is still relevant, in particular in
relation to redistribution, which still plays an important role in most European countries, despite the differences in the redistributive capacity of the
different systems (see indicators no. 23-26 in Table 2).
Table 4:
Dispersion rates of selected indicators at NUTS 2 level, 1999-2007
SE
NO
FI
1999
2007
4.8
4.4
2.4
1.7
6.7
5.5
1999
2007
5.6
4.3
3.0
2.3
7.4
6.2
1999
2007
28.3
9.2
n.a.
n.a.
30.5
37.3
1999
2007
18.9
20.5
19.0
31.6
9.3
14.9
1990
2006
10.4
13.4
9.2
12.7
15.1
11.6
DE
FR
IT
Total activity rates
5.4
7.1
17.4
6.0
7.1
15.6
Female activity rate
6.9
10.0
30.2
5.8
9.0
25.7
Youth unemployment
36.0
21.7
57.3
40.1
20.1
46.3
Long-term unemployment
8.1
14.1
33.9
9.9
12.8
25.8
Elderly dependency *
10.7
20.7
19.5
7.8
18.3
16.2
ES
PL
UK
10.8
8.7
4.8
6.4
7.5
6.0
17.6
14.8
6.5
7.6
7.3
6.5
29.2
20.7
32.3
14.4
25.4
18.0
17.1
24.9
16.4
15.7
29.4
22.4
4.5
5.0
16.1
9.5
n.a.
7.8
Source: Own calculations on Eurostat online database (2008). Data for Switzerland not available.
Notes:
(*) Countries of the Rescaling project. Spain: Ceuta and Melilla excluded; France: Guadalupa, Martinica, Guyana and Reunion excluded; Finland: Åland and Lappland excluded.
In this sense, the new forms of multilevel governance that are emerging may well be differentiated and partly fragmented, with relevant differences among policy areas, but as long as relevant resources are regulated
and redistributed at the national level – and they are still regulated in most
European countries at the national level – the degrees of coherence with
national welfare systems are higher than one might expect. Of course the
rescaling process significantly affects this state of affairs, in particular when
the institutional design of provisions and access criteria are decentralised to
sub-national levels. This does not mean that management and implementation are less relevant. The pioneering studies by Lipsky (1980) on the role of
street-level bureaucracy in modifying, adapting and influencing the outcome
of policies through the discretionary power social workers have, should not
be underestimated. Nevertheless, the discretion power of social workers is
also embedded in different regulatory contexts which offer them different
tools and resources. If a social worker has a series of institutional tools to
rely upon, i.e. both passive and active ones as, for instance, a guaranteed
minimum income which lifts families above the poverty line, he/she can
concentrate on the development of a personalised – and eventually ad hoc
designed plan involving the claimant – insertion plan. If he/she cannot do
that, then one of his or her main tasks will entail the building of creative (but
more often precarious and unevenly distributed) solutions for each case.
Alternatively, a social worker must witness the demise of the programme
due to budgetary constraints.
The comparative data presented in Table 5 provide a rather articulated
picture of the development of the Gini index measuring income inequality
over the last 25 years. Despite its almost generalised increase, rather pathdependent tendencies persist in the diversity among countries. In particular,
the countries belonging to the European social model display a lower degree
of income inequality than countries, like the US for instance, where the low
level of policy intervention exposes people in need to the increased speed of
change of the market and where privatised Keynesianism (Crouch, 2008) has not
been able to redistribute – almost by definition – resources. Markets change
faster than political redistributive institutions, which are more resilient. This
resilience, however, offers sub-national bodies the opportunity to be actors for
institutional innovation. Slowing down the pace of change, in fact, extends
the time available for exploring new solutions. Sub-national bodies become
– once again – laboratories of how social policies construct citizenship, social
69
Yuri Kazepov
Table 5:
70
Trends in Gini coefficients of income inequality in selected OECD
countries, 1985-2005
Mid-1980s
Mid-1990s
Mid-2000s
∆ 1985-2005
Denmark
Finland *
Sweden *
Norway *
0,221
0,207
0,198
0,234
0,215
0,228
0,211
0,256
0,232
0,269
0,234
0,276
+ 0,011
+ 0,062
+ 0,034
+ 0,042
Austria
Belgium
France *
Germany
Netherlands
0,236
0,274
0,300
0,257
0,259
0,238
0,287
0,270
0,272
0,282
0,265
0,271
0,270
0,298
0,271
+ 0,029
- 0,003
- 0,030
+ 0,041
+ 0,012
Greece
Italy *
Portugal
Spain *
0,336
0,309
0,329
0,371
0,336
0,348
0,359
0,343
0,321
0,352
0,385
0,319
- 0,015
+ 0,043
+ 0,056
- 0,052
Hungary
Czech Republic
Poland *
Slovakia
Switzerland
0,273
0,232
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
0,294
0,257
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
0,291
0,268
0,372
0,268
0,276
+ 0,018
+ 0,036
n.a.
n.a.
n.a.
Ireland
United Kingdom
0,331
0,325
0,324
0,354
0,328
0,335
- 0,003
+ 0,010
United States
Australia
Canada
Japan
0,338
n.a.
0,287
0,304
0,361
0,309
0,283
0,323
0,381
0,301
0,317
0,321
+ 0,043
n.a.
+ 0,030
+ 0,017
OECD-24
OECD-22
0,293
0,279
0,310
0,293
0,313
0,300
+ 0,020
+ 0,021
Source: OECD Questionnaire on income distribution (September 2008).
Notes:
(*) Rescaling countries.
inclusion and participation (Le Galès, 2002; Kazepov, 2005; Mouleart et al.,
2007; Keating, 2009). The real challenge plays out in the definition of who
is included and who is excluded and the way in which rescaling and the
new governance arrangements affect the outcome of this renewed struggle.
From this point of view, the different European countries under investigation
provide interesting perspectives into the potentially positive and negative
consequences of the subsidiarisation-of-social-policies process ranging from
empowering practices and participatory configurations to a differentiated
landscape of rights (and duties) which shape the unequal citizen.
The devil is in the detail, and exploring some details is what we are
going to do in this book.
Thanks
I would like to thank Marco Arlotti and Eduardo Barberis very much for
organising and calculating the data for all tables in this chapter. They should
also be thanked for their extensive and repeated feedback on the content of
the chapter and their strong support throughout the whole research project
upon which this book and introduction are based. Many thanks also go to
Tapio Salonen who invited me to Vaxjö University as a visiting professor
where I had access to its wonderful library; those electronic resources served
as a basis for this introduction. Useful comments have been provided by
Alan Scott, Rahel Strohmeier, David Benassi, Enzo Mingione, Renate Minas,
Stefania Sabatinelli and Tatiana Saruis. I am also thankful to Walter Hanesch, who invited me to the Expert Seminar Die Zukunft der Sozialen Stadt
in Darmstadt (DE), and Jan Galkowsky who invited me to Lublin (PL) to
the European Cities conference, where I had the opportunity to fruitfully
discuss and fine-tune parts of the issues included here. The usual disclaimers apply.
71
Low-Medium0
Low0
Medium0
Very high0
Local
autonomy
centrally
framed0
Centrally
framed0
Regionally
framed0
Regionally
framed0
Mixed0
Low-Medium0
Regional
variation
Territorial
frame
Southern
European)
(ES, IT))
Transition
mixed)
(PL))
Scandinavian )
(SE, FI, NO))
Continental
National )
(FR))
Continental
Federal )
(CH, DE))
Delivery,
management
and planning0
Delivery,
management
and planning0
Highly
fragmented
(managerial,
corporative,
clientelistic)0
Highly
fragmented
(managerial,
corporative,
clientelistic)0
Low0
Low0
Medium0
Delivery,
management
and planning0
Corporative0
High0
Users’
involvement
Medium0
Delivery0
Governance
content
Delivery and
management0
Corporative and
statist managerial0
Managerial
participative0
Governance
type
High (passive
subsidiarity)0
High (passive
subsidiarity)0
High (active
subsidiarity)0
Medium0
Very low0
Intermediate
bodies’
involvement
72
0
Mainly central0
Regional
and local0
Regional
(Kanton, Land)0
Central0
Central0
Bargaining
level
Non-profit/
for profit0
Non-profit0
Non-profit/
for profit0
Non-profit/
for profit0
For profit0
Main
private
actors
Planning
and shared
management
with limitations0
Planning
and shared
management
with limitations0
Shared in planning
and management0
Planning
and shared
management0
Planning and
management0
Role of
public actor
Yuri Kazepov
Appendix. Synopsis of the main characteristics of vertical
and horizontal subsidiarity

Rescaling Social Policies: Towards Multilevel

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