Work and the welfare state [electronic resource] : street-level organizations and workfare politics / Evelyn Z. Brodkin and Gregory Marston, editors.

Issued as part of UPCC book collections on Project MUSE.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 283-310) and index.

Preface / Evelyn Z. Brodkin and Gregory Marston -- Introduction -- Work and the welfare state / Evelyn Z. Brodkin -- Street-level organizations and the welfare state / Evelyn Z. Brodkin -- What's at issue: politics, policies, and jobs -- The American welfare state : two narratives / Michael Lipsky -- The policies of workfare : at the boundaries between work and the welfare state / Evelyn Z. Brodkin and Flemming Larsen -- Double jeopardy : the misfit between welfare-to-work requirements and job realities / Susan Lambert and Julia Henly -- Governance and management : workfare's "second track" -- Triple activation : introducing welfare-to-work into Dutch social assistance / Rik van Berkel -- Active labor market reform in Denmark : the role of governance in policy change / Flemming Larsen -- Performance management as a disciplinary regime : street-level organizations in a neoliberal era of poverty governance / Joe Soss, Sanford Schram, and Richard Fording -- Street-level organizations and the practices of workfare -- Commodification, inclusion, or what? : workfare in everyday organizational life / Evelyn Z. Brodkin -- Race, respect, and red tape : inside the black box of racially representative bureaucracies / Celeste Watkins-Hayes -- Good intentions and institutional blindness : migrant populations and the implementation of German activation policy / Martin Brussig and Matthias Knuth -- Front-line workers as intermediaries : the changing landscape of disability and employment services in Australia / Gregory Marston -- Administrative justice : challenging workfare practices -- Conditionality, sanctions, and the weakness of redress mechanisms in the British "new deal" / Michael Adler -- Redress and accountability in U.S. welfare agencies / Vicki Lens -- Conclusion -- Work and the welfare state reconsidered : reflections on past practices and future prospects / Evelyn Z. Brodkin -- References -- About the contributors.

Work and the Welfare State places street-level organizations at the analytic center of welfare-state politics, policy, and management. This volume offers a critical examination of efforts to change the welfare state to a workfare state by looking at on-the-ground issues in six countries: the US, UK, Australia, Denmark, Germany, and the Netherlands. An international group of scholars contribute organizational studies that shed new light on old debates about policies of workfare and activation. Peeling back the political rhetoric and technical policy jargon, these studies investigate what really goes on in the name of workfare and activation policies and what that means for the poor, unemployed, and marginalized populations subject to these policies. By adopting a street-level approach to welfare state research, Work and the Welfare State reveals the critical, yet largely hidden, role of governance and management reforms in the evolution of the global workfare project. It shows how these reforms have altered organizational arrangements and practices to emphasize workfare's harsher regulatory features and undermine its potentially enabling ones. As a major contribution to expanding the conceptualization of how organizations matter to policy and political transformation, this book will be of special interest to all public management and public policy scholars and students.

Description based on print version record.