Abstract
Abstract The article deals with an institutional reform of public employment services implemented in the Czech Republic in 2011. By merging social benefits administration with employment services into the newly established Labour Office of the Czech Republic, the right-wing government attempted to reduce the staffing and administrative costs of these services and to improve the governance of local labour offices. Using the theoretical concept of “policy fiasco” and taking an interpretive perspective thereon, we analyse these organisational changes in the functioning of public employment services in the Czech Republic. Our data consist of interviews with experts on labour market policy in the Czech Republic and two focus groups with employees of labour offices who had participated in the reform process. We conclude that the institutional reform of public employment services in the Czech Republic in 2011 can be referred to as a policy fiasco in the sense of the theoretical concept used in the work of Bovens and t’Hart (1998).
Highlights
In the year 2011, the Czech Republic implemented a series of institutional changes to the management and operations of public employment services
We conclude that the institutional reform of public employment services in the Czech Republic in 2011 can be referred to as a policy fiasco in the sense of the theoretical concept used in the work of Bovens and t’Hart (1998)
We examined all public statements of Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Jaromír Drábek with regard to the institutional reform of labour offices and, for the purposes of our analysis, we treated them as official statements of the Ministry
Summary
In the year 2011, the Czech Republic implemented a series of institutional changes to the management and operations of public employment services. The term policy fiasco was coined by Bovens and t’Hart (1998) who took an interpretive approach to studying the phenomenon In their definition, a policy fiasco is “a negative event that is perceived by a socially and politically significant group of people in the community to be at least partially caused by avoidable and blameworthy failures of public policymakers” 14) For that reason, the authors are highly specific with regard to the basic principles that underlie their analysis They postulate inevitable subjectivity (impossibility to identify objective indicators and tools to evaluate controversial policy events), normative pluralism (different actors have different norms and criteria of evaluation that are determined by their professional affiliations), an explicit meta-theoretical orientation (the interpretive paradigm), and a focus on broader social contexts of the events analysed. The more-or-less justified beliefs of the street-level bureaucrats that the changes implemented were essentially wrong may themselves have contributed to the fundamental failure of the policy that we refer to as a policy fiasco
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