Management Reforms in Activation Programmes and Public Employment Services The Turkish Case

Abstract

There are many studies on the ways in which activation paradigm has been integrated into the reform of welfare states. Activation paradigm and related policies serve to activate citizens to take more responsibility for their own welfare through paid employment. Active labour market policies (ALMPs) have constituted one of the important policy fields in which active welfare understanding have been materialised and thus become a significant instrument of activation. These programs and relevant measures constitute formal policy reforms. There is also a rising literature on procedural policy reforms in the field of activation, which is about the ways that ALMPs are managed, that is, the governance of activation. Recent procedural reforms include measures shaped by the New Public Management thinking such as performance management or management by objectives, and the process of marketization through quasi markets. The debates on the governance of activation show the ways in which management reforms shape the content of activation reforms. This study attempts to evaluate those debates on procedural reforms in ALMPs through review of the relevant literature and based on the Turkish case. Turkey is a late comer in implementation of activation programmes but in the last two decades policy reforms both in ALMPs and in the ways formal policy reforms are governed and implemented have accelerated.