The Marketization of Employment Services: The Dilemmas of Europe's Work-first Welfare State

Across Europe, market mechanisms are spreading into areas where they did not exist before. In public administration, market governance is displacing other ways of coordinating public services. In social policy, the welfare state is retreating from its historic task of protecting citizens from the discipline of the market. In industrial relations, labor and management are negotiating with an eye to competitiveness, often against new non-union market players.

What is marketization, and what are its effects? This book uses employment services in Denmark, Germany, and Great Britain as a window to explore the rise of market mechanisms. Based on more than 100 interviews with funders, managers, front-line workers, and others, the authors discuss the internal workings of these markets and the organizations that provide the services.

This book gives readers new tools to analyse market competition and its effects. It provides a new conceptualization of the markets themselves, the dilemmas and tradeoffs that they generate, and the differing services and workplaces that result. It is aimed at students and researchers in the applied fields of social policy, public administration, and employment relations and has important implications for comparative political economy and welfare states.