Abstract
ABSTRACT The international trend of state restructuring and the rise of decentralized welfare systems means a key challenge for social research is to systematically explore the breadth of factors shaping the territorialization of third sector welfare delivery at the meso level in federal and union states. We address this lacuna by synthesizing historical-institutionalism and critical realism with Salamon and Anheier’s classic framework on civic infrastructure development to produce an inductive analytical model for wider empirical testing. Its application here to the longitudinal case study data covering Wales shows it to be effective in providing a holistic understanding of the temporal and spatial processes underpinning decentralization. The wider significance of the case study lies in underlining the iterative, reciprocal relationship between governance reforms and territorialization – and showing how territorialization can originate in response to national crises and welfare demand caused by state and market failure in the delivery of public goods.
Highlights
In response to an international trend of state restructuring and devolution a burgeoning literature has sought to analyse the decentralization of the welfare state (Borghi and Van Berkel 2007)
Our core finding is that welfare decentralization is driven by discontinuity at critical junctures related to governance transitions, national crisis and political shifts (Thatcherite reforms, and the partnership rhetoric of government given expression in the devolution reforms of the 1990s)
The wider significance of this study is both theoretical and empirical. In the former regard, it makes an original contribution by synthesizing neo-institutionalism and critical realism with Salamon and Anheier’s (1996) classic framework on civic infrastructure development to offer an inductive, systemic analytical model of contingent factors shaping the meso-territorialization of third sector welfare in federal and union states
Summary
In response to an international trend of state restructuring and devolution a burgeoning literature has sought to analyse the decentralization of the welfare state (Borghi and Van Berkel 2007). The degree to which welfare is a residual category at the meso level may act as a spur or contingent factor leading to the development of territorialized third sector welfare provision This is supported by the case study data. Their effect was to formalize the territorialization process for the UK government required bespoke compacts from the territorial ministries for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland (and Westminster in the case of England) This shift is described in the Council’s report of the time as ‘a major step forward’, noting that the ‘government is determined to forge the strongest possible links with the voluntary sector and to support it in every way it can’ (WCVA 1998, 3). The WCVA has entered the era of devolution with expectations of being a significant and key player in the Assembly and its development. (Dicks, Hall, and Pithouse 2001, 156)
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