Responses from the Frontline: How Organisations and Street-Level Bureaucrats Deal with Economic Sanctions
| DOI | 10.1177/138826271501700102 |
| Author | Dorte Caswell,Matilde Høybye-Mortensen |
| Published date | 01 March 2015 |
| Date | 01 March 2015 |
| Subject Matter | Article |
HOW ORGANISATIONS AND STREET-
LEVEL BUREAUCRATS DEAL WITH
ECONOMIC SANCTIONS
Dorte Caswell and Matilde Høybye-Mortensen*
Abstract
Economic sanctions have gained more political legitimacy and are being more widely
used as a tool to improve the willingness of unemployed welfare recipients to participate
in activities within the framework of active labour market policy (ALMP). Th
e focus
of this article is the use of economic sanctions on cash benefi t recipients in Denmark.
Quantitative analyses show a substantial increase in the use of economic sanctions
in Denmark, including sanctions on those who are categorised as having problems in
addition to unemployment. In this article we will direct our attention to responses from
both the organisational and individual level regarding the implementation of sanctions.
Empirical material consists of interviews with managers and frontline social workers in
municipalities with a high number of sanctions. We argue that organisations matter in
shaping street-level behaviour, resulting in substantial diff erences in the use of sanctions
from one municipality to another.
Keywords: economic sanctions; organisational practices; social work; street-level
organisation; unemployed
1. INTRODUCTION
Economic sanctions have gained more political legitimacy and are being more widely
used as a tool to improve the willingness of unemployed clients to participate in
activities within the framework of active labour market policy (ALMP) in Denmark
*
Dorte Caswell is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Work, Faculty
of Social Sciences, Aalborg University. Address: Frederikskaj 10, 2450 Copenhagen SV, Denmark;
phone: +45 9940 2614; e-mail: caswell@socsci.aau.dk. Matilde Høybye-Mortensen is a researcher
at KORA, Danish Institute for Regional and Local Government Research. Address: Købmagergade
22, 1250 Copenhagen K, Denmark; phone: +45 21937015; e-mail: maho@kora.dk. Th
e study was
fi nanced by Th
e Council for Socially Marginalized People.
European Journal of Social Security, Volume 17 (2015), No. 1
31
Dorte Caswell and Matilde Høybye-Mortensen
(Caswell et al. 2011). Reforms in many countries have shift ed the way in which welfare
states treat citizens who are unable to participate in the labour market (Soldatic
and Pini 2012). In Denmark the reforms have gradually widened the target group
for the active programmes, increased the requirements placed on the unemployed,
introduced harsher penalties for their failure to meet these requirements, and
placed greater emphasis on compliance (Bigby and Files 2003). Th
e use of economic
sanctions on cash benefi t recipients is central to this development. Quantitative
analyses show a substantial increase in the use of economic sanctions in Denmark,
including sanctions on those who are categorised as having problems in addition to
unemployment (Caswell et al. 2011). In 2006, 6.8 per cent of clients categorised as not
ready for the labour market were sanctioned. In 2013, 13.5 per cent of clients in this
category received a sanction (jobindsats.dk). Th
e focus of this article is on the use of
economic sanctions on cash benefi t recipients with multiple barriers to work. Th
ese
clients are sometimes referred to in the literature as the ‘hard-to-serve’ or the ‘hard-
to-employ’ (Butler et al. 2012; Soss et al. 2011a).
Sanctions are administered by street-level bureaucrats working in welfare
organisations; a group of employees who are considered to have a major impact on
policy, since they are delivering the services to the citizens (Lipsky 1980). Th
e street-
level bureaucrats’ room for manoeuvre is, however, like the hole in the doughnut,
surrounded by a belt of restrictions (Dworkin 1978: 31). Th
e restrictions are
imposed from national, local and operational levels, giving rise to the organisational
perspective on street-level bureaucracy (Brodkin 2008). In Denmark there are
substantial diff erences in the use of sanctions from one municipality to another, a
diff erence which is not immediately explicable by diff erences in the characteristics
of the unemployed (Caswell and Høybye-Mortensen 2011). Th
us, the municipal
organisations seem to have an impact on shaping street-level behaviour in imposing
sanctions. Th
is argument is in line with the fi ndings of Soss, Fording and Schram
(2011a; 2011b), who see sanctions as organised practice, which means that sanctions
are refl ecting organisational characteristics and not merely client characteristics. Th
e
ambition of this article is to explore the point made by Soss et al. (2011b) that few
studies have paid attention to the diff erent aspects of organisational structure, process
and culture in relation to the use of sanctions. Th
ey argue that: ‘Th
e omission is striking
because it ignores the obvious fact that sanction decisions are made in the context
of organizational routines, by actors who occupy specifi c organizational positions
(…) scholars have failed to address one of the most distinctive and critical features
of contemporary poverty governance: the interplay of systems for disciplining clients
(e.g., sanctions) and systems for disciplining service providers (e.g., performance
management)’ (Soss et al. 2011b: 205).
Th
e performance measures in the Danish case are somewhat diff erent from and less
harsh than in the North American case, and we therefore want to investigate how this
works in a diff erent setting, namely the Danish setting. A substantial part of literature
on the use of economic sanctions has focused on welfare recipients and the eff ects of
32
Intersentia
Responses from the Frontline
these sanctions in terms of welfare exit (Rosholm and Svarer 2008; Svarer 2011; Van der
Klaauw and Van Ours 2013). In this article we contribute to the research on economic
sanctions in three diff erent ways. First, we contribute to the limited literature on the
interplay between sanctioning systems aimed at clients and systems for disciplining
service providers (in Jobcentres and Cash Benefi t Offi
ces) as pointed out above by Soss
et al. Secondly, we explore economic sanctions in a rather diff erent setting, that is, in
a universalistic welfare state, where benefi ts are considered generous and in a country
with a long tradition of ALMP. Th
irdly, but related to the fi rst two ways, we explore
economic sanctions in a diff erent governance setting. Whereas the employment service
in the US is primarily run by private providers who are at risk of going out of business if
they lose customers, the employment services in Denmark are run by municipalities as
essential organisational units within the Danish welfare state. However, municipalities
are potentially at risk of losing the task of managing the employment services if they
are perceived, at a national level, to be performing poorly (Th
uesen et al. 2009).
Previous research has shown that the implementation of ALMP policies in the
Danish municipalities has tended to be more in line with a human capital and social
integration approach than with a disciplining and harsher work-fi rst approach (Larsen
2001; Larsen and Bredgaard 2009). In a recent Danish study only 13 per cent of the
caseworkers across the Danish municipalities gave highest priority to ‘using economic
sanctions when clients fail to appear at meetings in the jobcentre’ (Jørgensen et al.
2014). Our expectations would be that, given the long tradition of ALMP in Denmark
(Larsen 2013), the implementation of sanctions will co-exist with a focus on social
integration and human capital, making the sanction practices less paternalistic in
Denmark than elsewhere, especially for the hard-to-employ.
Our two research questions are, fi rst, how does the implementation of a sanctioning
regime reshape the conditions of work in the municipal employment services? And,
second, how do workers and managers respond to these conditions in practice?
2.
THE ORGANISATIONAL PERSPECTIVE ON STREET-
LEVEL BUREAUCRACIES
In this section we outline the literature on street-level bureaucrats ‒ and the
organisations they inhibit ‒ in order to develop a theoretical framework for the
analysis. A central point in the literature on street-level bureaucracy is that policy is
not created by politicians but rather translated and realised at the very frontline of
the welfare state (Lipsky 1980). If the actions of street-level bureaucrats diverge from
national policies, it is arguable that this poses a problem for democracy. Numerous
studies have followed this line of thought and have attempted to explain why and
how this seems to be the case (Hupe and Hill 2007; Sandfort 2000 and many others).
Street-level bureaucrats, by defi nition, have room for discretion. Th
eir discretionary
role is central to the study of street-level bureaucracies. However, previous research
European Journal of Social Security, Volume 17 (2015), No. 1
33
Dorte Caswell and Matilde Høybye-Mortensen
shows diff ering approaches as to how to view the application of discretion in a welfare
benefi t context. While initially the literature focused on the shared dilemmas of street-
level bureaucrats across several areas of welfare provision (Lipsky 1980), later works
have focused on other ways of understanding or explaining the divergence between
national policy and welfare provision at the frontline. Some studies have focused
on individual diff erences...
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