'For the modern welfare state support' for those who are out of work through no fault of their own remains a foundation stone. Now, however, under pressure form market-driven ideology focused on business performance, its composition and the way support is delivered is in a state of flux. With the avowed objective of minimizing dependence on social benefits and increasing labour market efficiency, many national policies with varying degrees of thoroughness are shifting from a bureaucratic approach to some form of contract arrangement that demands a higher level of personal responsibility from the unemployed worker. The contractualisation process is usually administered through a 'reintegration service' that may be partly or wholly privatised. This remarkable book is the first comparative in-depth study of the process of contractualisation. It offers seventeen penetrating analyses, by leading labour market and labour law authorities, of recent policy initiatives to activate employment by contract and the implications of these initiatives from both legal and a socioeconomic perspective. Among the issue explored are the following: motivation, mobility, and flexibility in the labour market; effect of contractualisation on public accountability and responsibility; effect on the individual's statutory relationship under social security; whether and to what extent the conditions on which one country successfully introduces contractualisation apply to other countries; and, the unemployed individual as 'contract partner': What conditions can he or she set? The analyses focus on experience with contracts as service deliverance in the labour markets of eight countries: Australia, the United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, and Finland. Because a certain measure of experience has already been built up by governments, providers, and clients, now is the time to try and learn form good as well as bad practices in order to build coherent institutional frameworks to help the unemployed. This book is sure to bring insight and effectiveness to the work of professionals, officials, and politicians in this policy field, and will be of special practical value to labour law practitioners, academic researchers and libraries, trade unions, policymakers, and corporate counsel.

Getting Welfare to Work traces the radical reform of the Australian, UK, and Dutch public employment services systems. Starting with major changes from 1998, this book examines how each national system has moved from traditional public services towards more privately provided and market-based methods. Each of these three countries developed innovative forms of contracting-out and complex incentive regimes to motivate welfare clients and to control the agencies charged with helping them. The Australian system pioneered the use of large, national contracts for services to all unemployed jobseekers. By the end of our study period this system was entirely outsourced to private agencies. Meanwhile the UK elected a form of contestability under Blair and Cameron, culminating in a new public-private financing model known as the 'Work Programme'. The Dutch had evolved their far more complex system from a traditional public service approach to one using a variety of specific contracts for private agencies. These innovations have changed welfare delivery and created both opportunities and new constraints for policy makers. Getting Welfare to Work tells the story of these bold policy reforms from the perspective of street-level bureaucrats. Interviews and surveys in each country over a fifteen year period are used to critically appraise this central pillar of the welfare state. The original data analysed in Getting Welfare to Work provides a unique comparative perspective on three intriguing systems. It points to new ways of thinking about modes of governance, system design, regulation of public services, and so-called activation of welfare clients. It also sheds light on the predicament of third sector organisations that contract to governments through competitive tenders with precise performance monitoring, raising questions of 'mission drift'.