Introduction: The dual tracks of welfare and activation reform – Governance and conditionality

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Since the financial crisis, Ireland’s welfare state has been reorientated around a regulatory, ‘work-first’ activation model. Claimants now face penalty rates for non-compliance with activation requirements that have been significantly extended since 2009. Alongside these formal policy reforms, the organisations delivering Public Employment Services, and the modes by which they are commissioned, have also been reconfigured through a series of New Public Management style governance reforms, including, most notably, the creation of a quasi-market for employment services (JobPath) in 2015. This article addresses the intersection between activation and quasi-marketisation, positioning the latter as a form of ‘double activation’ that reshapes not only <italic>how</italic> but also <italic>what</italic> policies are enacted at the street level. It unpacks their shared logics and mutual commitment to governing agents at a distance through a behavioural public policy orientation, and reflects on the extent to which marketisation is capable of producing lower-cost but more responsive employment services.
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‘Double activation’: Workfare meets marketisation

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This article provides a critical commentary on Irish activation policy. It is framed with reference to the point made in <italic>Pathways to Work 2016–2020</italic> that a key purpose of activation is ‘to help ensure a supply of labour at competitive rates’. It looks at how a tougher work-first activation regime can be situated within the wider landscape of reform and retrenchment in the social protection system following the 2008 financial crisis. Broadly utilising Pierson’s concepts of programmatic and systemic retrenchment, it situates the roll-out of activation within shifts toward greater reliance on means-tested benefits for the unemployed, and toward work first, with varying degrees of compulsion, for other working-age adults in the social protection system. Suggesting that this results in a hierarchy of ‘welfare sacrifice’ for the sake of the competitiveness of the Irish economy, it also looks briefly at how some of these ‘sacrifices’ are experienced by different groups both in and out of the labour market. The article concludes by noting that the Covid-19 pandemic has temporarily transformed state–market relations such as these; however, whether this offers the opportunity to forge a more supportive turn in activation policy post-pandemic remains an open question.
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Sacrificial citizens? Activation and retrenchment in Ireland’s political economy

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This paper analyses the impact of the intensification of work-related conditionality on the lived experience of jobseekers in Ireland. Post-crisis Ireland has witnessed the emergence of a definitive policy trajectory which seeks to enable a lifelong attachment to the labour force through work-related conditionality buttressed by sanctions. This mode of governing unemployment attempts a restructuring of the caseworker–claimant relationship through increased engagement, claimant adherence to mandatory conditions, and surveillance underpinned by potential reduction, suspension or loss of benefit. The paper provides a qualitative investigation of the lived experience of this impact through a thematic analysis of forty-two interviews with jobseekers in a county in the east of Ireland. The focus on the agency of jobseekers illustrates a system based on superficial engagement in which conditionality primarily operates as bureaucratic formality. This is reflective of a systemic indifference to claimants’ needs and circumstances, producing a performance of feigned compliance in response.
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Navigating indifference: Irish jobseekers’ experiences of welfare conditionality

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This paper focuses on Ireland’s ‘activation turn’ and the roll-out of the <italic>Pathways to Work</italic> policy, contextualising these reforms within recent international developments in activation. Using a qualitative approach, the study explores the perceptions of a range of key stakeholders – jobseekers, employment guidance practitioners, employment service managers, ancillary services and policymakers – offering some important insights into Ireland’s move towards activation and the implementation of <italic>Pathways to Work</italic>. Three overarching themes were identified: depersonalisation, the missing ‘how to’ of implementation, and the reform agenda. These findings, although tentative, provide a new understanding of the perceptions of key stakeholders, described as ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’, and their views about both implementation and perceived effectiveness.
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Opening the black box of implementing activation in Ireland

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In this paper the authors draw on a qualitative study of low-work-intensity households in a disadvantaged suburb of Dublin in 2016–17 to identify some of the gaps in Ireland’s reformed ‘one-stop shop’ Public Employment Service. Drawing on the issues recognised as being required in an integrated Public Employment Service, the paper draws attention to gaps in information; training; services that support employment, such as childcare and housing; and links to employers. The authors conclude by drawing lessons on the issues which need to be addressed for a more tailored Public Employment Service.
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Moving towards a more tailored Public Employment Service?

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The past was a different country, and the future will be different too. The Covid-19 pandemic has brought in its wake massive unemployment, shifting attention away from pre-pandemic labour market challenges. More labour market turbulence can be expected in the context of the fourth industrial revolution, digitalisation and automation, as well as climate-change-related transitions. In this context of such acute uncertainty, flexible, adaptable public employment institutions are a core requirement. Concerned with institution building, this paper explores how to maximise synergies in existing Public Employment Services (PES) while developing an ecosystem that can utilise all other available resources across public, private and not-for-profit national and local institutions. The political context for policy and institutional reform is a centralised, relatively small and open state which demonstrates some capacity to learn from previous crises and institutional reforms to tackle unemployment. The concept of a Strategic Action Field is used to deepen our understanding of the structure and agency dynamics underlying PES reform in the context of quasi-markets. A more systematic approach to institutional reform is needed that values a diversity of actors – this is visualised as a Public Employment Eco System (PEES) embedded in processes of network governance and collaborative innovation.
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Arguments for a post-pandemic Public Employment Eco System in Ireland

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Administration

 PRINT ISSN: 0001-8325ONLINE ISSN: 2449-9471  Administration is the peer-reviewed journal of the Institute of Public Administration of Ireland. It has been published quarterly since 1953. As the principal journal concerned with Irish public administration and its development, it seeks to combine original scholarship on public administration from a variety of disciplines with the insights and experiences of practitioners.  Rejection Rate   80%   Archiving  Sciendo archives the contents of this journal in Portico - digital long-term preservation service of scholarly books, journals and collections.  Plagiarism Policy  The editorial board is participating in a growing community of Similarity Check System's users in order to ensure that the content published is original and trustworthy. Similarity Check is a medium that allows for comprehensive manuscripts screening, aimed to eliminate plagiarism and provide a high standard and quality peer-review process. 