Hostname: page-component-5447f9dfdb-lxcff Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-07-30T16:16:31.270Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Quasi-Markets in Employment Policy: Do They Deliver on Promises?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2008

Thomas Bredgaard  and
Flemming Larsen
Thomas Bredgaard
Affiliation:
Centre for Labour Market Research at Aalborg University (CARMA), Fibigerstraede 1, DK-9220 Aalborg, Denmark E-mail: thomas@socsci.aau.dk, flemlar@socsci.aau.dk
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article focuses on the contracting-out of Public Employments Services. Quasi-markets promise to deliver more efficient, effective and de-bureaucratised employment services. By comparing experiences from Holland, Australia and Denmark we investigate whether quasi-markets deliver on promises. Quasi-market models have difficulties in living up to the preconditions for a well-functioning market and political expectations. Efficiency gains and cost-savings are still largely unknown. Instead it is clear that quasi-markets create a new type of employment policy, and new conditions for governing the labour market and employment policy. Clouded in the ‘technical’ language of improved efficiency and effectiveness, such changes are often neglected and depoliticised.

Information

Type
Themed Section on The Governance of Activation
Information
Social Policy and Society , Volume 7 , Issue 3 , July 2008 , pp. 341 - 352
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2008

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Barbier, J.C. (2005), ‘Embedding contractualism in national institutions: performance contracts in the French Public Employment Service’, in Sol, E. and Westerveld, M. (eds), Contractualism and Employment Services – A New Form of Welfare State Governance, The Hague: Kluwer Law International, pp. 255–80.Google Scholar
Bredgaard, T. and Larsen, F. (2006), Udliciteringen af beskæftigelsespolitikken – Australien, Holland og Danmark, Copenhagen: DJØF-forlaget.Google Scholar
Bredgaard, T. and Larsen, F. (2007), Implementing Public Employment Policy: What Happens when Non-Public Agencies take over?, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 27, 7/8, 287–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brodkin, E. (2005), ‘Towards a contractual welfare state: the case of work activation in the United States’, in Sol, E. and Westerveld, M. (eds), Contractualism and Employment Services – A New Form of Welfare State Governance, The Hague: Kluwer Law International, pp. 73–101.Google Scholar
Bruttel, O. (2005), ‘Contracting-out and governance mechanisms in the public employment service’, Wissenschaftszentrum, discussion paper 2005–109, Berlin.Google Scholar
Considine, M. (2000), ‘Selling the unemployed: the performance of bureaucracies, firms and non-profits in the new Australian market for Unemployment Assistance’, Social Policy and Administration, 34, 3, 274–95.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Considine, M. (2001), Enterprising States – The Public Management of Welfare-To-Work, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Considine, M. (2003), ‘Governance and competition: the role of non-profit organisations in the delivery of public services’, Australian Journal of Political Science, 38, 1, 63–77.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Considine, M. (2005a), ‘The reform that never ends: quasi-markets and employment services in Australia’, in Sol, E. and Westerveld, M. (eds), Contractualism and Employment Services – A New Form of Welfare State Governance, The Hague: Kluwer Law International, pp. 41–71.Google Scholar
Considine, M. (2005b), ‘Steering, efficiency and partnership: the Australian quasi-market for public employment services’, in Bredgaard, T. and Larsen, F. (eds), Employment Policy from Different Angles, Copenhagen: DJØF Publishing, pp. 191–210.Google Scholar
De Koning, J. (2004), The Reform of the Dutch Public Employment Service, Erasmus University Rotterdam: SEOR.Google Scholar
European Employment Observatory (2004), European Employment Observatory – Review: Spring 2004, Brussels: European Commission.Google Scholar
Finn, D. (2005a), ‘Contracting out and contestability: modernising the British public employment service’, in Bredgaard, T. and Larsen, F. (eds), Employment Policy from Different Angles, Copenhagen: DJØF Publishing Copenhagen, pp. 233–52.Google Scholar
Finn, D. (2005b), ‘The role of contracts and the private sector in delivering Britain's ‘Employment First’ welfare state’, in Sol, E. and Westerveld, M. (eds), Contractualism and Employment Services – A New Form of Welfare State Governance, The Hague: Kluwer Law International, pp. 101–19.Google Scholar
Koning, J. de (2004), The Reform of the Dutch Public Employment Service, Erasmus University Rotterdam: SEOR.Google Scholar
Konle-Seidl, R. (2005), ‘New delivery forms of employment service in Germany: a mixed public–private model’, in Sol, E. and Westerveld, M. (eds), Contractualism and Employment Services – A New Form of Welfare State Governance, The Hague: Kluwer Law International, pp. 187–208.Google Scholar
Le Grand, J. and Bartlet, W. (1993), Quasi-Markets and Social Policy, Houndsmill: Macmillan Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rambøll (2004), Erfaringsopsamling vedrørende inddragelsen af andre aktører i beskæftigelsesindsatsen, København: Rambøll Management.Google Scholar
Simonin, B. (2005), ‘Formal contracting with providers in France: a technical approach with higher political stakes today’, in Sol, E. and Westerveld, M. (eds), Contractualism and Employment Services – A New Form of Welfare State Governance, The Hague: Kluwer Law International, pp. 281–306.Google Scholar
Sol, E. (2005), ‘Contracting out the public employment service from a governance perspective’, in Bredgaard, T. and Larsen, F. (eds), Employment Policy from Different Angles, Copenhagen: DJØF Publishing Copenhagen, pp. 155–73.Google Scholar
Sol, E. and Westerveld, M. (2005), Contractualism in Employment Services – A New Form of Welfare State Governance, The Hague: Kluwer Law International.Google Scholar
Struyven, L. (2004), Design choices in market competition for employment services for the long-term unemployed, OECD social, employment and migration working papers no. 21, OECD, Paris.Google Scholar
Struyven, L. (2005), ‘The new institutional logic of public employment services’, in Bredgaard, T. and Larsen, F. (eds), Employment Policy from Different Angles, Copenhagen: DJØF Publishing Copenhagen, pp. 175–91.Google Scholar
Struyven, L. and Steurs, G. (2003), ‘Towards a quasi-market in reintegration services: first assessment of the Dutch experience’, Australian Journal of Labour Economics, 6, 2, 331–55.Google Scholar
Struyven, L. and Steurs, G. (2005), ‘Design and redesign of a quasi-market for the reintegration of jobseekers: empirical evidence from Australia and the Netherlands’, Journal of European Social Policy, 15, 3, 211–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Struyven, L. and Verhoest, K. (2005), The problem of agency at organisational level and street level: the case of the Flemish public employment service, in Sol, E. and Westerveld, M. (eds), Contractualism and employment services – a new form of welfare state governance, The Hague: Kluwer Law International, pp. 325–358.Google Scholar
Van Berkel, R. and Van der Aa, P. (2005), ‘The marketization of activation services: a modern panacea? Some lessons from the Dutch experience’, Journal of European social policy, 15, 4, 329–349.CrossRefGoogle Scholar