Critical infrastructure of social and labour market integration: Capacitating the implementation of social service policies to the long-term unemployed in Germany and France?
| Published date | 01 June 2023 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/13882627231187609 |
| Author | Renate Reiter |
| Date | 01 June 2023 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue: Social services as critical infrastructureGuest Editors: Renate Reiter and Tanja Klenk |
Critical infrastructure of social
and labour market integration:
Capacitating the
implementation of social service
policies to the long-term
unemployed in Germany
and France?
Renate Reiter
Faculty of Cultural and Social Sciences, Department of Political Science: Public Policy
& Environmental Policy, FernUniversität in Hagen, Hagen, Germany
Abstract
Active social and employment services are a crucial infrastructure of the welfare state. As these
services are designed to help people in need of support to overcome periods of insecurity in their
life course, their effective provision has also been seen as an element of the implementation of the
social investment (SI) welfare state. However, the transition to the SI state is linked to numerous
preconditions. This is especially true with regard to vulnerable people like the long-term
unemployed (LTU). The provision of social services that meet the specific needs of this group
requires the actors responsible for implementing social and employment policies to have adequate
operative capacities. This article compares Germany and France as two European welfare states
that –confronted with persistently high long-term unemployment –have taken different reform
paths over the last 20 years that partly run counter to their political-administrative systemic con-
ditions and governance traditions to meet this challenge. Empirically, the article draws on a sys-
tematic content analysis of selected policy documents and secondary literature. It is shown that
the recent German reform path of combining central steering responsibility with local scope
for action can be a way to come closer to a social investment-oriented service policy for the
LTU. However, the article also reveals that neither state (yet) has the necessary operative capaci-
ties for a shift towards an SI state. Overall, the changes in the understanding of the SI paradigm and
Corresponding author:
Renate Reiter,Faculty of Cultural and Social Sciences, Department of Political Science: Public Policy & Environmental Policy,
FernUniversität in Hagen, Universitätsstraße 33 / C, 58084 Hagen, Germany.
E-mail: renate.reiter@fernuni-hagen.de
Special Issue: Social services as critical infrastructure
European Journal of Social Security
2023, Vol. 25(2) 158–177
© The Author(s) 2023
Article reuse guidelines:
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DOI: 10.1177/13882627231187609
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the welfare state’s constant reluctance to invest in implementation capacity make its sustainable
application unlikely.
Keywords
Social services, long-term unemployed, implementation, operative capacity, Germany, France
Introduction
Both counselling and active social and employment services for the (re-)integration of the
unemployed into professional and social life have been an integral part of the European welfare
state’s infrastructure for decades. Given their encompassing and possibly preventive nature, such
services have been said to have the potential to put a shift towards the social investment (SI) para-
digm of the welfare state into practice (Sabel et al., 2017: 177). However, this has also been con-
sidered to be full of preconditions (ibidem) as the design of services must be tailored to individual
needs in order to make substantial social investment possible. The challenge is particularly high
with regard to the long-term unemployed (LTU). As LTU people usually face multiple problems,
they need particularly complex service offers as well as longer-term support from the competent
integration agencies (cf. European Court of Auditors, 2021: 7)
1
.
Scholars of the SI paradigm have recently stressed that the orientation of the welfare state
towards this idea is not solely functional (cf. Morel and Palme, 2017) in the sense of only concen-
trating on increased labour market participation, as has been criticised (cf. Bothfeld and Rouault,
2015; Saraceno, 2015). Rather, they emphasise the potential of the SI state to enable individuals,
including particularly vulnerable people, to participate in society and lead independent, self-
determined lives as ‘social citizens’(Morel and Palme, 2017: 187–188; Plavgo and Hemerijck,
2021). Against the backdrop of this argumentation, it is particularly worth looking at the activity
of the welfare state when confronted with complex problems like LTU. What does the welfare
state do to lend effective support to the affected groups or individuals and to offer individually tai-
lored (but also politically legitimate) social services? The predominant focus in the literature is on
the macro level of public policymaking (Garritzmann et al., 2018) and the conception of policy
instruments. In this article, it is argued that this is not sufficient to answer this question. Rather,
it is necessary to look at the level of policy implementation and to question the operative capacities
of the organisations charged with implementing social service policies.
This article studies this ‘operational core of the social investment state’(Klenk and Reiter, 2023)
in the field of social service policies for the LTU in Germany and France. It asks how administrative
reforms in both countries since the early 2000s have affected the operative capacities of the orga-
nisations in charge of implementing social service policies for the LTU, and what can be learned
from the comparison about the implementation prerequisites of the SI state. To answer these ques-
tions, the article applies an analytical framework that is developed referring to the policy capacity
approach of Wu et al. (2018), combining it with insights from policy implementation literature
1. According to the definition of the International Labour Organization (ILO), long-term unemployed (LTU) are ‘people
who are out of work and have been actively seeking employment for at least 12 months’(European Court of
Auditors, 2021: 8). In combination with a long duration of joblessness, LTU people often also suffer from additional
(e.g. social, health, psychological, etc.) problems (ibidem: 7).
Reiter 159
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