Increasing Roles for Municipalities in Delivering Public Employment Services: The Cases of Germany and Denmark

AuthorFlemming Larsen,Matthias Knuth
DOI10.1177/138826271001200301
Published date01 September 2010
Date01 September 2010
174 Intersentia
INCREASING ROLES FOR
MUNICIPALITIES IN DELIVERING PUBLIC
EMPLOYMENT SERVICES:
THE CASES OF GERMANY AND DENMARK
M K and F L*
Abstract
Literature on labour mark et policy reforms and, in parti cular, on ‘activation’ has
tended to treat the ‘state’ or ‘public authorities’ as given actors, no matter how much
their roles may c hange in the process. However, ‘the sta te’ may have several faces in
countries with strong legacie s of municipal self-government as well as in countries
with a federal c onstitutional set-up. Taking De nmark and Germany as examples,
this article analyses the ch anging roles of municipalities in the process of ‘activating’
labour market policy reforms. It does so with regard to organisational development
in the proces s of co-locating or even merging municipal with national agencies, the
role of social partners in social protecti on against unemployment and the public
employment service , the impact of municipal social assistance in the process of
hybridisation of benet regimes, and the governan ce conicts involved when shiing
responsibilities for emplo yment services.
Keywords: Denmark ; Germany; governa nce; industrial relations; local government;
public employment service; socia l protection
1. INTRODUCTION
e mainst ream of comparative work on employment policy reforms in Europe h as
traditional ly focused on activation a s a new rationale of the relationship between
* Dr Matt hias K nuth is Head of t he Resea rch Unit on t he ‘Evolution of Employment Systems’ at
the Institut für Arbeit und Qu alikation (IAQ), University of Du isburg-Essen, D-45117, Essen,
Germany; tel: + 49 203 379 1821; e-mai l: matthias.k nuth@uni-due.de; Dr Fle mming Larsen is
Associate Professor at the Centre for L abour Ma rket Rese arch (CAR MA) in the Department of
Economics, Politics and Ad ministration , Aalborg Univer sity, Fibigerstraede 1, DK-9220, Aalborg ,
Denmark; tel : +45 99 40 81 94; e-mail: em lar@epa.aau.d k.
Increasing Role s for Municipalities i n Delivering Public Employ ment Services
European Jour nal of Social Secu rity, Volume 12 (2010), No. 3 175
the welfare state and the citizen,1 and more recently a lso on the governance and
implementation of t his policy s hi, exemplied by contracting-out as a means of
providing services ,2 and on ‘ joining up dierent branches of public administration in
order to create ‘one-stop shops’ or ‘single gateways’.3 Little attention has yet been paid
to t he fact that the third rat ionale oen c omprises not only dierent branch es, but
also dierent le vels of government and, municipa lities.4 Li kewise, the implications
of including municipalities in employment policies have hitherto not been explored
in dept h. Where municipalities become part of the game, they w ill introduce their
own professional tradit ions of framing social problems and of deal ing with them.
Where they are traditionally responsible for a social safety net of last resort, particu lar
rules a nd rationales of such a ‘lower regime’ of soc ial protection5 may be part of the
municipal package.
‘Municipalisation’ of Public Employment Services (PES) includes extreme c ases
where, like the current 69 German ‘licens ed municipalities’ or the Da nish municipal
jobcentres, municipalit ies become entirely responsible for delivering the services
required by national legislation. In other c ases, like the former Germ an ‘consortial’
jobcentres or the Danish co-operative jobcentres, municipalities are drawn more
closely than before into national labour market polic ies and share responsibilities
with national and possibly sub-national authorities i n delic ate arr angements.
Without necessa rily implying full devolution of the PES to municipalities, the term
‘municipalisation’ wi ll be used as a short hand expression for increases in t he roles of
municipalities in del ivering public employment services.
By ma king a comparison between Denmark and Germany, thi s article analyses
the i ntentions behind, as well as some of the eects emerging from, an increase i n
the roles municipal ities play in del ivering Public Employment Services in the two
countries. Denmark and Germany lend t hemselves particula rly well to such a
comparison because they both have a strong tradition of municipal self-administrat ion
and a benet structu re for unemployed people with a clear distinc tion between social
insurance and socia l assistance. ey also seem to converge in that they both have
recently merged service provision for all or some u nemployed pe ople in units that
1 Gilbert et al. (2001); Klammer a nd Leiber (2004); Newman (2007); S errano Pascua l et al. (2007 ).
2 Sol et al. (2005); Bredgaard and La rsen (2008).
3 Pollitt (2003); Clasen et al. (2 001) .
4 Commonly referred to a s ‘ local government’ in the internationa l l iterature, the legal status of
municipalit ies is actua lly subject to debate among cons titutional law yers and polit ically conteste d
within d ierent national syste ms of governance − see Hesse (1991). Without entering suc h debates,
the authors would never theless like to emphasise t he i diosyncratic and inter nationally varie d
character of the territoria lly lower levels of democratic self-administ ration, whic h renders them,
in most countr ies, quite dierent fr om just being the ‘lo cal branch’ of nat ional government. is i s
why the ter m ‘municipalitie s’ is used i n this paper for dierent ter ritorial unit s that may be larger
cities, asso ciations of townships or cou nties.
5 For the concept of regimes of social protection th at co-exist withi n one national welfare regime, se e
Knuth (2009a).

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