Advocacy as market stewardship in social care quasi-markets

Abstract

ABSTRACT Quasi-market approaches to social care provision are being utilized across the world, with stewardship of these markets becoming an area of interest and concern for governments and scholars. The market-stewardship literature mainly focuses on the role of central governing bodies, however non-government actors also play important stewardship roles. This paper examines stewardship activities conducted by advocacy organizations in a social care quasi-market – the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme. We argue effective market stewardship requires central agencies to support these activities and suggest development of a distributed stewardship framework joining up work of central agencies with local-level actors.