18. Governing welfare: beyond states and markets?

Conveners: John Clarke, Janet Newman

18.A

Carmel Emma and Paul Regine (University of Bath, UK)
The struggle for coherence: assembling governance in an incoherent environment, the example of migration policy in the EU.

Hvinden Bjørn (Norwegian Social Research - NOVA, N,) Johansson Håkan (Växjö University, SE)
Civil Dialogue as Inclusion and Incorporation

Larsen Flemming (Aalborg University, DK), Matthias Knuth (University of Duisburg-Essen, DE)
Municipalisation in the German and the Danish Public Employment Service

Bonini Roberta ( Catholic University of Milan, IT), Pesenti Luca (Regional Observatory on Social Esclusion, Milan, IT)
The emerging forms of governance in the locals welfare systems.

18.B

Mattei Paola (University of Mannheim, DE)
Performative Accountability and State Schools in Europe

Villa Matteo (University of Pisa, IT)
Logics of rule and intervention: a theoretical framework and an empirical observation of the Italian regional reforms

Schulz Andreas (Kassel University, DE)
The welfare state and the institutional setting of organizations

Haikio Liisa (University of Tampere, FI)
Governing welfare by reshaping welfare needs

Distributed papers

Minas Renate (Institute for Future Studies, SE)
“Joint-up governments” as a new organizational trend in bridging social and employment policies in European countries?

Righard Erica ( Växjö University , SE)
Social policy and the transnational family: A missing link

As new forms of organising and delivering welfare continue to develop, we expect this stream to explore the emergent arrangements through which welfare is being governed. Established typologies (the distinction between state and market or the hierarchy, markets and networks framework) fall short of new organisational forms and governance arrangements that are identified through such terms as boundary blurring or hybridity. Such terms mark the problem of naming these new arrangements, but bring problems of their own.

We are interested in questions of how to describe and analyse these new governing arrangements. In these processes of boundary blurring, hybridity and assemblage, a number of dynamics are visible, such as:

• New organisational forms (e.g.,‘hybrid’ or ‘blended value’ organisations)
• Boundary blurring or innovation across sectors (e.g., ‘social enterprise’)
• Changing scales of welfare governance (in processes of decentralization or localization, or in transnational organisations and relationships)
• The authorization of new voices and views (users, communities and so on) in governance processes; and
• New forms of welfare management.

In such dynamics, there are important issues about how forms of power and authority are being remade, realigned and reconstructed. New forms, sites, techniques, practices and relationships of governing welfare are implicated in tis reordering of power.

We invite papers from those interested in contributing to new analyses of how welfare is being governed. We welcome papers that explore any of the dynamics listed above (as well as ones that we have not identified). We will prioritise those trying to explore the analytical problems these innovations involve – particularly but not only around issues of power and authority.

Conference theme

The Annual ESPAnet Conference 2009 focuses on the future of the welfare state. More precisely it will address paths of social policy innovation highlighting existing constraints, path dependencies and opportunities of social policy change. The conference provides a forum to address theoretical and methodological questions, to reflect on inter- and multi-disciplinarity in social policy research and to discuss new analytical trends. It will also deal with changing paradigms in the concept of the welfare state and in the actual configuration of social policy innovation in Europe and beyond. Shifts in underlying basic principles will also be addressed, ideas or objectives, and factors which might drive such changes and what directions they might indicate for the future of the welfare state.

ImPORTANT DATES

15 March 2009 = deadline for abstract submission
27 April 2009 = Notification of selected abstracts
2 May 2009 = registrations open
15 Jun 2009 = Early bird registration and deadline for (some) hotel options
15 August 2009 = Deadline for paper submission
1 September 2009 = Papers online
17-19 September 2009 = Conference