Implementing public employment policy: what happens when non-public agencies take over?

Like most other areas within welfare policy, the employment and social policy areas are undergoing far-reaching changes in many countries. Partly in the shape of new forms of governance inspired by New Public Management (NPM), partly through new policies oriented towards activation and stronger disciplining of the unemployed (work first) (cf.Bredgaard & Larsen, 2005; Sol & Westerweld, 2005). It is, however, remarkable that in the research field there seems to be a division of labour so that changes in public administration and changes in the substance of employment policies are dealt with separately. But there is an interesting question to investigate here: whether and if so how, NPM-inspired reforms are related to changes in employment policy towards a work-first approach? Are changes in public management systems created as deliberate policy changes, or do they bring about more indirect and unintended policy changes? The main objective of this article is to focus on the relationship between NPM structures (specifically contracting out) and shifts in the substance of policy (specifically employment policies). We propose that changes in management are capable of supporting policy changes by means of new implementation structures (and often do – whether intentionally or not). However, management reforms tend to be dominated by “technical” discourses on their alleged effectiveness and efficiency, whereas their consequences for policy content tend to be neglected or given limited attention. Even when NPM reforms do support an intended policy shift, there seems to be very little public discussion about them. Far-reaching policy changes become politically invisible and de-politicized. Our empirical case is the contracting out of the public employment services in Australia, the Netherlands and Denmark. The main question is what happens to public employment policies when they are contracted out to various non-public (for-profit and non-profit) agencies. The data consist of in-depth interviews with key respondents in the three countries, observations at service delivery agencies, and desk studies of existing research.