A “Gilded Cage”?
Groningen’s Social Assistance Policy during the Activation
Revolution of the Dutch Welfare State 1990-2016
Author H.S.W. Wagenaar S1881884 Johannes Vermeerstraat 52 9718 SN Groningen H.S.W.Wagenaar@outlook.com Supervision
Supervisors: Dr. E.H.K. Karel; Dr. R.G.P. Peters First Reader: Dr. E.H.K. Karel
Second Reader: Dr. C.M. Megens
Research Master of Modern History and International Relations Faculty of Arts and Humanities, University of Groningen
Date
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Foreword
At this very moment, municipalities like Groningen attempt to reinvent their role in the Dutch welfare state. That is the origin of this master thesis. In a meeting on 15 February 2016, the Management Team (concernstaf) of the municipality of Groningen commissioned the University of Groningen to write a history of its social policy. Although the municipality’s policymakers desired the history to be general in scope, the immediate justification for commissioning the research at the University of Groningen was to gain knowledge how to integrate a relatively large group of long-term un(der)employed with ‘the more creative and constructive elements in the city’.1 In other words, the municipality intended to obtain
a social history on its own identity to support its planning for the future.
After a literature study and reflection on the feasibility of such a project, I decided against a general history of the municipality’s social policy. Groningen is already blessed with an excellent book on its twentieth century history, including social policy,2 and can boast of a more specialist history of
municipal unemployment policy3 and its health policy4 of the last century. The municipality also figures
prominently in a more recent publication on the history of the province.5
Therefore, I chose for a more limited topic: how Groningen has interacted with the transformation of the welfare state in the past two-and-a half decades, focusing on its social assistance policy. According to a subset of the academic literature on the welfare state, the members of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) have since the nineties reformed their welfare states in line with an activation paradigm. One part of that revolution towards an ‘active’ welfare state has been an increasingly important role for the local level. While many scholars have published on the activation paradigm and the accompanying decentralisation of the welfare state, to my knowledge no-one has of yet actually traced this historical development in a municipality. Thus, through this master thesis, Groningen is the first.
As the thesis topic is a study of a municipality in the Netherlands, most of the source material is Dutch. I have therefore attached to the thesis (attachment A) all my choices for the translations of Dutch terms, also including a list of English acronyms encountered during the thesis.
1 As also outlined in the local coalition programme and the municipal budget for 2016. See ‘Coalitieakkoord
2014-2018: Voor de verandering’ (Gemeente Groningen, May 2014), 5–6, https://gemeente.groningen.nl/coalitieakkoord.
2Maarten Gerrit Jan Duijvendak and Bart de Vries, eds., Stad van het Noorden: Groningen in de twintigste eeuw,
Groninger historische reeks 25 (Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum, 2003).
3 Jan Blaauw et al., Geen verhaal: 100 jaar werkloosheid in de stad Groningen, ed. Jo Willems and Hanna Kwist
(Groningen: Forsten, 2000).
4 Jet Spits, Hij heeft vooral gepoogd leemten aan te vullen: een geschiedenis van gemeentelijke gezondheidszorg
in de stad Groningen 1919-1994 (Groningen: GGD Groningen, 1995).
5 M.G.J. Duijvendak, ed., Geschiedenis van Groningen III: nieuwste tijd - heden (Zwolle: Waanders Uitgevers;
4
Contents
Foreword ... 3 I. Introduction ... 7 Project context ... 7 Historiography ... 9Research objective /Research framework ... 19
Figure 1.1. Research framework ... 20
Table 1.1. Development of the population in large Dutch municipalities; total population on January 1... 21
Table 1.2 Comparing national and local coalitions ... 23
Research questions ... 24
Theoretical approach ... 24
Method and Methodology ... 34
Figure 1.2. Evaluation model of the social policy cycle ... 35
II. Nieuwe Algemene Bijstandswet (New Social Assistance Act) ... 36
Run up to the New Social Assistance Act, 1989-1996: paradigm shift ... 36
Legislation process ... 41
Developments in the municipality of Groningen ... 42
Implementation of the law ... 53
Responses to Groningen’s implementation ... 56
Post 1996 developments: Administrative collapse and Groningen op de Ladder ... 57
Figure 2.1. “Self-sufficiency ladder”, Groningen op de ladder translated ... 64
Conclusion ... 66
III. Wet Werk en Bijstand (Work and Social Assistance Act) ... 69
The run-up to the Work and Social Assistance Act... 69
Figure 3.1. Dutch GDP per Capita in US Dollar, constant prices (2010), 1969-2015 ... 71
The WWB ... 73
5
Groningen@Work, Work First and administrative reform (again) ... 79
Evaluation of the WWB reform ... 82
Figure 3.2 Percentage of Social Assistance Benefits (of Total Population) of the Netherlands, 1965-2015 ... 83
Figure 3.3. Percentage of Social Assistance Recipients (of Total Population) in Groningen Jan. 1994- Jan. 2017 ... 84
Figure 3.4. Development of Social Assistance recipients relative to the total population in index numbers (1995=100) ... 85
Conclusion ... 88
IV. Participatiewet (Participation Act) ... 90
The run-up to the Participation Act: the Work according to Capability Act ... 90
Participation Act ... 96
Groningen: implementation and administrative reform (once more) ... 99
Output and evaluation ... 103
Conclusion ... 105
V. Conclusion ... 107
Recap ... 107
Answer and Reflection ... 107
The rhetorical construct of the activation paradigm ... 107
Explaining reform to social assistance: a self-propelling dynamic ... 109
Municipal influencing and implementation of national policymaking ... 111
Implementation and administrative burden ... 112
The characterisation of the national-local relation ... 112
(Possible) Consequences on the street-level ... 113
Final observations... 114
VI. Source Material ... 115
Archival material ... 115
Groningen Archives ... 115
6
Municipality Archives (Semi-Static) ... 115
National Archives ... 117
European Union (digital documents)... 119
Municipality of Groningen (digital documents) ... 119
Newspapers ... 120 Parliamentary Papers ... 124 Parliamentary proceedings ... 124 Parliamentary Documents ... 124 Statistics ... 126 Bibliography ... 126
Attachment A: List of abbreviation and translations ... 134
Dutch terms and abbreviations ... 134
English abbreviations ... 139
Attachment B: Overview of Local Coalition Agreements 1978-2014 ... 140
Image from local coalition programmes ... 140
Table A.1. Overview of coalition agreements in Groningen ... 142
7
I. Introduction
Project context
Even though Dutch municipalities stand hierarchically below the central government, their autonomous implementation of legislation can have a different impact on society than what the national government originally intended. In May 2016, the executive of the municipality of Groningen informed its council on its implementation policy regarding the Wet Taaleis (Minimum Language Proficiency Act).6 The law
–which had come into effect five months earlier – required every social assistance recipient to meet a minimum level of proficiency in the Dutch language, disobedience to improve deficiencies resulting in (temporary) benefit cuts.7 It was added on top of the already existing obligation to (re-)enter the labour
market, although the central government did not give a right to financial support or language courses to compensate for the new duty.8 In a letter to the council, Groningen argued: “since the national
government does not sufficiently compensate for the implementation of this law, and most social assistance recipients do not have the means to pay for language courses, we propose to limit the implementation to recipients with a reasonable chance to obtain a job.”9 As a result, Groningen was not
only five months late with formulating its policy on the law, but this way also explicitly severely limited down its application by introducing a new distinction that was not present in the law itself.
As evidenced in this instance above, the Netherlands’ national government attempts to direct its municipalities even though social assistance policy is notionally decentralised to municipalities, while municipalities like Groningen make their own choices for interpretation and implementation even where the law is notionally centralised. This double paradox has a strong contemporary relevance due to the recent decentralisation operation in the Dutch welfare state. Building on an earlier decentralisation of 2004-2007 of social assistance and simple care services,10 and on proposed reforms of the preceding
6 D.E. Duin, ‘Implementatie Wet taaleis Participatiewet’, letter from Burgomaster and Aldermen to the
Municipality Council, May 3, 2016, reference nr. 5644007,
https://groningen.raadsinformatie.nl/modules/5/college-_en_andere_brieven/view (accessed February 13, 2017). [Note: all letters of the municipality between 2008 and the present can be found on this site. In the following references, I leave out the URL. In the source list at the end of the MA thesis, one can find a list with all the municipality letters cited.].
7 Kamerstukken Tweede Kamer, 33975: Wet Taaleis WWB, nr. 3: ‘Memorie van Toelichting’, vergaderjaar
2013-2014 [Note: parliamentary papers for the Parliament of the Netherlands can all be found online on two websites. I have listed these under ‘parliamentary papers’ under the ‘source material’ section at the end of the thesis]; ‘Wet taaleis Participatiewet’, Overheid.nl, accessed 10 February 2017, http://wetten.overheid.nl/BWBR0036496/2016-01-01.
8 See Handelingen Eerste Kamer, vergaderjaar 2014-2015, vergadernr. 23, item 9: Taaleis Wet Werk en Bijstand,
March 10, 2015.
9 “Nu de financiële middelen voor de implementatie echter onvoldoende zijn en de meeste bijstandsgerechtigden
niet uit eigen zak een taalcursus kunnen betalen, stellen we voor om onze inspanningen te richten op bijstandsgerechtigden met een reële kans op werk.” See ‘Implementatie Wet taaleis Participatiewet’
10 In 2004, social assistance was fully decentralised (Wet Werk en Bijstand (WWB): Work and Social Assistance
8 government,11 the Liberal-Labour coalition of 2012-2016 chose to forcefully decentralise social policy
to cut costs. From the first of January 2015, municipalities were fully responsible for the provision of all forms of youth care and welfare, for more complex home and outpatient care, and for the reintegration of partially disabled individuals who now would receive social assistance. Citing activation and engagement of citizens, higher cost-efficiency and the possibility to offer tailor-made care to justify the reforms, the government also cut severely on the expenses associated with these policy fields.12 As an
overall legitimation of this trend, the coalition announced in 2013 via the person of the King – who had ascended the throne a few months earlier – that the classical welfare state was over: the “participation society” (“participatiesamenleving”) had begun.13
While the term “participation society” seems to be a Dutch invention, although its coinage much older than 2013,14 it does not describe a unique phenomenon. In fact, it is merely one of the various
concepts that scholars, politicians and others have created to describe a perceived transformation of welfare states across the developed world. In the academic literature, scholars discuss the effects of the rise of an ‘activation paradigm’ since the nineties of last century. As I will demonstrate, the activation paradigm is associated with all the elements in the language requirement reform example above: the focus on reintegration on the labour market, the increased conditionalisation of social assistance, and the paradox of decentralisation/centralisation. Groningen and the Netherlands therefore fit in a global picture.
The purpose of this thesis is to study the long-term patterns in this relationship from the moment the activation paradigm became dominant in the Netherlands. I intend to contribute to the debate on the ‘activation’ revolution of the welfare state, in particular concerning how the local level responded to and interacted with the national level, by means of a historical study of the implementation of national activation reforms in the municipality of Groningen between 1990 and 2016. In this period, I focus on three policy cycles of the national law on social assistance and reintegration.
(WMO): Societal Support Act). See for a good overview: Jos van der Lans, ‘1965: Marga Klompé en de Bijstandswet: Van genade naar recht (naar verplichte participatie)’, Canon Sociaal werk Nederland, 18 March 2016, http://www.canonsociaalwerk.eu/nl/details.php?cps=32&canon_id=31; Jos van der Lans, ‘2007: Wet maatschappelijke ondersteuning: Op weg naar een participatiesamenleving’, Canon Sociaal werk Nederland, 7 May 2014, http://www.canonsociaalwerk.eu/nl/details.php?cps=48&canon_id=39.
11 ‘Vrijheid en verantwoordelijkheid: regeerakkoord VVD-CDA’, 14-15, in TK, 2010-2011, 32417:
Kabinetsformatie 2010, nr. 15: Brief van de informateur, October 7, 2010.
12 ‘Bruggen slaan: regeerakkoord VVD-PvdA’, October 29, 2012’, in TK, 2012-2013, 33410: Kabinetsformatie
2012, nr. 15: Brief van de informateurs; L. Boswijk, ‘Informatie ontwikkelingen vernieuwing sociaal domein’, letter from Burgomaster and Aldermen to the Municipality Council, February 21, 2013, reference nr. OS 13.3521695.
13 ‘Lees en kijk de troonrede hier terug: “de klassieke verzorgingsstaat verdwijnt”’, De Volkskrant, September 17,
2013, http://www.volkskrant.nl/binnenland/lees-en-kijk-de-troonrede-hier-terug-de-klassieke-verzorgingsstaat-verdwijnt~a3509115/ (accessed June 26, 2017).
14 Jos van der Lans, ‘2013: Participatiesamenleving: uitweg voor onbetaalbaarheid verzorgingstaat’, Canon
9 In this introduction, I will first give an overview of the welfare state historiography, and how I came to a study on the implementation of the activation in the municipality of Groningen. I will then develop my own approach, including the research design, the theory used, as well as the methodology that follows from these considerations.
Historiography
Nowadays, scholars interested in the welfare state are participating mainly in two large debates: the attempt at systematic categorisation of welfare regimes, and the study of welfare state reform.
Within the first debate, scholars were originally preoccupied with institutional blue print studies or empirical comparative studies based on spending patterns across states.15 However, ever since
sociologist Gøsta Esping-Andersen published The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism,16 the debates
have centred on defining, categorising and re-categorising welfare states in “welfare regime types”. Although Esping-Andersen published his book in 1990, it still forms the centre of the debate. In 2015, political scientists Kees van Kersbergen and Barbara Vis even complained that the three world typology has become something like ‘Kuhnian normal science’, with more than nineteen thousand citations since 1990.17
The most attractive aspect of Esping-Andersen’s work is his subcategorization of western welfare states into three welfare regime types, each associated with a political ideology: a Liberal, a Social-Democratic and a Conservative model. His Liberal model, exemplified by the United States or Great-Britain, is a means-tested welfare state that works as market-strengthening: only those not (sufficiently) helped by the market will turn to the state for help. The Social-Democratic model, exemplified by Sweden, replaces the market on welfare with universalistic state-provisioning based on social rights, often in a dualistic model, guaranteeing both working class and middle class support.18
Lastly, the Conservative model, exemplified by Germany, while in generosity often finding the middle between the Liberal and Social-Democratic model, has a focus on status maintenance. It upholds hierarchies and status-differences even for the unemployed by linking benefits to previously earned income, and tends to administer the system according to a corporatist model, usually a partnership with both employers and trade union organisations.19
15 Of which Wilensky’s work is an example. See e.g: Harold L. Wilensky, ‘Social Policy: Is There a Crisis of the
Welfare State?’, in Handbook of Public Policy, ed. B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre (London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2006), 201–18, http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781848608054.n29.
16 Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1990).
17 Kees van Kersbergen and Barbara Vis, ‘Three Worlds’ Typology: Moving beyond Normal Science?’, Journal
of European Social Policy 25, no. 1 (1 February 2015): 111–23, doi:10.1177/0958928714556974.
18 Esping-Andersen notes that even the social-democratic models that started with universal flat-rate pensions
could not continue to do so with a prospering middle-class that would demand better. Thus, social-democracies in nations such as Sweden tended to create an additional structure on top, both raising the flat rate to a higher level of quality, and creating income-dependent welfare systems (pensions etc).
10 Since 1990, this classification of three systems has been changed, tested and expanded by Esping-Andersen’s colleagues. His colleagues have introduced a fourth regime type (“the radical welfare state”),20 and endless others have proposed their own welfare regime types, varying from Eastern
European, Mediterranean to Confucian welfare regimes. Most of these other proposals did not have staying power however, so scholars usually end up with three or four types.21
In his later work, responding to critiques by feminist scholars,22 Esping-Andersen added the
“care-family nexus” next to the “work-welfare nexus” of the original book. To denote this nexus, Esping-Andersen has added a defamilialisation concept to the original decommodification and stratification concepts which he used to empirically subdivide states.23 While decommodification is the extent a
person depends on the market for survival, stratification denotes the extent the welfare state divides society into ranked groups. The concept defamilialisation refers to the extent individuals are able to depend on other sources than their families for care and social support, this way including the extent a welfare regime assumes the existence of a strong male breadwinner model.24
With his typology, Esping-Andersen has achieved remarkable simplification and analytical efficiency for comparisons between welfare states. However, one major point of discussion (and of confusion) in the recent literature is whether his three worlds are a typology, denoting an exhausting classification of welfare regimes, or a set of theoretical ideal-types with a more or less proper fit to reality.25 The relatively recent formulation of this theory into an analytical ideal type model weakened
its link to the nation-state as a geographical area, thereby enabling its application on policy fields and
20 Baldwin in his review article noted that Francis Castles with several others introduced a fourth one, the “radical
welfare state”. See Peter Baldwin, ‘The Welfare State for Historians. A Review Article’, Comparative Studies in Society and History 34, no. 4 (1992): 703. This fourth one is also confirmed with a new model (“Multiple Correspondence Analysis”) by Emanuele Ferragina, Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, and Mark Tomlinson, ‘Unemployment Protection and Family Policy at the Turn of the 21st Century: A Dynamic Approach to Welfare Regime Theory’, Social Policy & Administration 47, no. 7 (December 2013): 783–805, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9515.2012.00855.x.
21 Kersbergen and Vis, ‘Three Worlds’ Typology’.
22 Jane Lewis, ‘Gender and the Development of Welfare Regimes’, Journal of European Social Policy 2, no. 3 (1
August 1992): 159–73, doi:10.1177/095892879200200301.
23 Emanuele Ferragina, Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, and Mark Tomlinson, ‘Unemployment Protection and Family
Policy at the Turn of the 21st Century: A Dynamic Approach to Welfare Regime Theory’, Social Policy & Administration 47, no. 7 (December 2013): 783–805, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9515.2012.00855.x; Gøsta Esping-Andersen, Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Incomplete Revolution : Adapting to Women’s New Roles (Cambridge: Polity, 2009).
24 Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, ‘The End of the Conservative German Welfare State Model’, Social Policy &
Administration 50, no. 2 (March 2016): 221, doi:10.1111/spol.12212; Ferragina, Seeleib-Kaiser, and Tomlinson, ‘Unemployment Protection and Family Policy at the Turn of the 21st Century’, 792.
25 Barbara Vis, Kees van Kersbergen, and Uwe Becker, ‘The Politics of Welfare State Reform in the Netherlands:
11 lower government levels.26 This move only stands to reason however, as in practice, welfare states sit
more across a continuum, as welfare states are usually amalgamations of various welfare provisioning systems. The Netherlands for instance combines three forms in its pensions system: public, semi-public and private. It is certainly not the only country in which such combinations exist.27
Even from the very beginning of the theory, however, the Netherlands was one of the cases that did not really fit the model’s typology. The Netherlands’ generosity in terms of outcomes made it resemble a social-democratic model, while the functioning of the system was akin to the conservative type. After all, the Netherlands did sport passive transfers based on social insurances, a major importance to the system of trade unions and employer organisations, and a strong breadwinner model.28
Complicating matters, these system characteristics have been changing since the nineties in a more Liberal and Social-Democratic direction. One the one hand, the Netherlands has given means-testing and the market a larger role, while on the other hand the state has taken a more important role vis-à-vis the family and civil society. The Netherlands has been moving away from the single breadwinner model for more than a few decades.29
Thus, that is where the second type of contributions enter: the debate on welfare state reform, which finds its form in process-historical studies. While originally, social scientists interested in the welfare state process were in the business of explaining the remarkable rise of the welfare state,30 ever
since the economic crises of the seventies and eighties more and more sociologists and political scientists have focused on welfare state reform. Although the debate started with the question whether or not the welfare state was in decline, unaffordable or even dead,31 most scholars are nowadays more interested
in the question of the extent of welfare state change, as scholars concede that the basic foundations of welfare states have remained relatively stable.32
26 Rice, ‘Beyond Welfare Regimes’; Giovanni Bertin and Marco Carradore, ‘Differentiation of Welfare Regimes:
The Case of Italy’, International Journal of Social Welfare 25, no. 2 (April 2016): 149–60, doi:10.1111/ijsw.12183.
27 Duco Bannink and Marcel Hoogenboom, ‘Hidden Change: Disaggregation of Welfare State Regimes for Greater
Insight into Welfare State Change’, Journal of European Social Policy 17, no. 1 (1 February 2007): 19–32, doi:10.1177/0958928707071877.
28 Ferragina, Seeleib-Kaiser, and Tomlinson, ‘Unemployment Protection and Family Policy at the Turn of the 21st
Century’; Vis, Kersbergen, and Becker, ‘The Politics of Welfare State Reform in the Netherlands’; Kees van Kersbergen, Social Capitalism : A Study of Christian Democracy and the Welfare State (London and New York: Routledge, 1995); Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism.
29Mariëlle Cloïn and Anne Roeters, ‘Drukte aan de vooravond van de participatiesamenleving: Sociale verschillen
en trends in de totale tijd besteed aan betaalde en onbetaalde arbeid in Nederland’, Tijdschrift voor Arbeidsvraagstukken 31, no. 4 (2015): 376–92.
30 Abram de Swaan, In Care of the State: Health Care, Education and Welfare in Europe and the USA in the
Modern Era, Europe and the International Order (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1988); Baldwin, ‘The Welfare State for Historians. A Review Article’; Peter L. Hupe, ‘Beyond Pillarization: The (Post-) Welfare State in the Netherlands’, European Journal of Political Research 23, no. 4 (1 June 1993): 359–86, doi:10.1111/j.1475-6765.1993.tb00365.x.
31 Wetenschappelijke Raad voor het Regeringsbeleid, De verzorgingsstaat herwogen: over verzorgen, verzekeren,
verheffen en verbinden, WRR rapporten aan de regering 76 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006), 22.
12 Though participants in the debate sometimes use the model of Esping-Andersen to outline the extent of change (and whether a welfare state shifted across the scale to a different type)33, thereby
linking the sets of theory, this practice is rather controversial. Due to the matching problem (the abstraction scale of the theory created/tested on the basis of empirics), a perceived labour market reform does not allow conclusions of a change of the overall welfare regime because it is on a different scale level.34
At this moment, the most promising candidate in the literature for a great transformation of the welfare state has been the activation paradigm which, according to scholars such as Van Kersbergen and economist Anton Hemerijck, has revolutionised the welfare state since the nineteen-nineties. In particular labour market and social security policy have seen a large transformation.35 ‘Activation’ has
been the most common label given to this ‘revolutionary’ approach of the welfare state,36 although
varieties of this ‘revolution’ of the welfare state have been dubbed ‘new/positive/enabling welfare’37,
‘the Third Way’38, ‘flexicurity’39, ‘social investment’40, and ‘workfare’41. Since social scholarship on
Workfare?’, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 10, no. 2 (June 2008): 151–69, doi:10.1080/13876980802028065; Willem Trommel, ‘A Study into Welfare Localization’, in Crafting Local Welfare Landscapes, ed. Duco Bannink, Hans Bosselaar, and Willem Trommel (The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 2013), 9–24.
33 A major example of this is the work by political scientist Martin Seeleib-Kaiser. See Seeleib-Kaiser, ‘The End
of the Conservative German Welfare State Model’; Ferragina, Seeleib-Kaiser, and Tomlinson, ‘Unemployment Protection and Family Policy at the Turn of the 21st Century’.
34 Sabina Stiller and Kees van Kersbergen, ‘The Matching Problem within Comparative Welfare State Research:
How to Bridge Abstract Theory and Specific Hypotheses’, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis: Research and Practice 10, no. 2 (1 June 2008): 133–49, doi:10.1080/13876980802028057.
35 Kees van Kersbergen and Anton Hemerijck, ‘Two Decades of Change in Europe: The Emergence of the Social
Investment State’, Journal of Social Policy 41, no. 3 (July 2012): 475–92, doi:10.1017/S0047279412000050; Vis, ‘The Direction and Scope of Social Policy Change’.
36 Jörg Timo Weishaupt, From the Manpower Revolution to the Activation Paradigm: Explaining Institutional
Continuity and Change in an Integrating Europe, Changing Welfare States (Amsterdam: Amsterdam Univ. Press, 2011).
37 Trommel, ‘A Study into Welfare Localization’.
38 Christoffer Green-Pedersen, Kees van Kersbergen, and Anton Hemerijck, ‘Neo-Liberalism, the “Third Way” or
What? Recent Social Democratic Welfare Policies in Denmark and the Netherlands’, Journal of European Public Policy 8, no. 2 (1 January 2001): 307–25, doi:10.1080/13501760110041604.
39 Tito Boeri, J. Ignacio Conde-Ruiz, and Vincenzo Galasso, ‘The Political Economy of Flexicurity’, Journal of
the European Economic Association 10, no. 4 (1 August 2012): 684–715, doi:10.1111/j.1542-4774.2012.01065.x; Paul de Beer and Trudie Schils, eds., The Labour Market Triangle : Employment Protection, Unemployment Compensation, and Activation in Europe (Cheltenham, UK, 2009); Ton Wilthagen and F. H. Tros, ‘The Concept of Flexicurity: A New Approach to Regulating Employment and Labour Markets’, SSRN Scholarly Paper (Rochester, NY: Social Science Research Network, 19 May 2008); Wim van Oorschot, ‘Balancing Work and Welfare: Activation and Flexicurity Policies in The Netherlands, 1980–2000’, International Journal of Social Welfare 13, no. 1 (January 2004): 15–27, doi:10.1111/j.1369-6866.2004.00294.x.
40 Kersbergen and Hemerijck, ‘Two Decades of Change in Europe’.
41 Chantal Gielen and Wim Otto, ‘Van welfare naar workfare’, TBV – Tijdschrift voor Bedrijfs- en
13 these concepts is often very close to politics and policy-making, it is often hard to distinguish whether they are descriptor of a change, an analytical concept or theory, or a normative/political concept to fight for or against.42
Often, the concepts seem to fulfil all three purposes. ‘Activation’ obviously implies a contrast with passivity and passive welfare states. Scholars such as Van Kersbergen and Hemerijck consider mostly Esping-Andersen’s conservative welfare regime type as passive, and argue that it has been these states that have been transformed most by the ‘revolution’/’paradigm shift’.43 ‘The Third Way’ refers to
the adaptation of social-democratic ideology to supply-side economics and globalisation.44 ‘Flexicurity’
is a triangle that links employment protection, unemployment benefits, and active labour market policies.45 Its idea, associated with Denmark and the Netherlands,46 and since the mid-2000s propagated
by the European Union as official policy,47 is to exchange more flexibility on the labour market for
higher unemployment benefits, while active labour market policies (ALMPs) serve as a lubricant.48
‘Social investment’ argues a strong economy builds on a strong welfare state49 by proposing the idea
that social spending might not merely be ‘consumption’ but also an ‘investment’ into the productive capacity of citizens, in particular in terms of employment or economic growth. Although meant to buttress social spending, social investment’s utility as a political, rhetorical and academic concept is heavily contested.50 Lastly, ‘workfare’ is the idea that social assistance recipients should work or find
work in return for their benefits.51 The concept contrasts a guaranteed safety net (welfare) with
Fletcher, ‘Workfare-a Blast from the Past? Contemporary Work Conditionality for the Unemployed in Historical Perspective’, Social Policy & Society 14, no. 3 (July 2015): 329–39, doi:10.1017/S1474746414000232.
42 Of course, as with all claimed revolutions, there are always historians and sociologists willing to trace a concept
back to earlier days. So scholars have traced “social investment” to thought of T.H. Marshall and various Marxist scholars, activation and active labour market to Scandinavian postwar policies, and compared “workfare” to the British social policies of the interbellum, or traced its antecedents in the United States. See Paul Smyth and Christopher Deeming, ‘The “Social Investment Perspective” in Social Policy: A Longue Durée Perspective’, Social Policy & Administration 50, no. 6 (November 2016): 673–90, doi:10.1111/spol.12255; Weishaupt, From the Manpower Revolution to the Activation Paradigm; Heli Leppälä, ‘Welfare or Workfare?: The Principle of Activation in the Finnish Post-War Disability Policy, Early 1940s to Late 1980s’, Journal of Social History 49, no. 4 (11 August 2016): 959–81; Fletcher, ‘Workfare-a Blast from the Past?’; Bertram, The Workfare State.
43 Kersbergen, Social Capitalism; Kersbergen and Hemerijck, ‘Two Decades of Change in Europe’;
Seeleib-Kaiser, ‘The End of the Conservative German Welfare State Model’; Ferragina, Seeleib-Seeleib-Kaiser, and Tomlinson, ‘Unemployment Protection and Family Policy at the Turn of the 21st Century’.
44 Green-Pedersen, Kersbergen, and Hemerijck, ‘Neo-Liberalism, the “Third Way” or What?’; Paul Wetherly,
‘The Reform of Welfare and the Way We Live Now: A Critique of Giddens and the Third Way’, Contemporary Politics 7, no. 2 (June 2001): 149–70, doi:10.1080/13569770120064171.
45 Beer and Schils, The Labour Market Triangle.
46 Kersbergen and Hemerijck, ‘Two Decades of Change in Europe’, 478–79.
47 ‘Flexicurity’, European Commission: Employment, Social Affairs & Inclusion, accessed 29 June 2017,
http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?catId=102; Boeri, Conde-Ruiz, and Galasso, ‘The Political Economy of Flexicurity’.
48 Boeri, Conde-Ruiz, and Galasso, ‘The Political Economy of Flexicurity’. 49 Smyth and Deeming, ‘The “Social Investment Perspective” in Social Policy’.
50 Kersbergen and Hemerijck, ‘Two Decades of Change in Europe’; Brian Nolan, ‘What Use Is “Social
Investment”?’, Journal of European Social Policy 23, no. 5 (2013): 459–468.
14 conditional support (workfare).52 According to sociologists Ivar Lødemel and Amilcar Moreira,
activation is therefore broader than workfare, mainly because it may include more policy instruments than merely unpaid work, and cover more forms of benefits.53 However, their relatively narrow
definition is not uncontroversial among scholars.54
‘Workfare’ most difficult to define, because both politicians and scholars sometimes use the term as a spectre of a nasty residual version of the welfare state55 or even an alternative (as in “workfare
state”).56 Sometimes it seems simply a rhetorical right-wing mirror for activation. For instance, workfare
is associated quite closely with the government of Bill Clinton (1994-2002), in particular the introduction of “Temporary Assistance to Needy Families” (TANF) in 199657, and to Margaret
Thatcher’s conservative government’s efforts, particular in the rhetoric of the Labour opposition.58 Once
Labour entered power in 1997, however, its New Deals just as much including conditionality under a language of rights and duties, Labour called its programme ‘activation’ rather than ‘workfare’.59
Sociologist Jörg Weishaupt has traced the activation revolution’s supranational dimension by studying how the Organisation for Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the European Union (EU) have strengthened and disseminated the paradigm amongst its members. The OECD first published a fully activation-minded initiative in 1990 (New Framework), while the European Union proposed an activation-oriented view in a white paper Medium-Term Strategy for Growth, Competitiveness and
Employment in 1993.60
Although the variety of concepts is rather large, they share at their core the notion that employment should take first priority in all aspects of (social) policy. Therefore, the income gap between work and welfare should be as high as possible, amongst others through the introduction of (higher) minimum wages and tax cuts on lower income scales (“making work pay”). Wage restraints and tax reduction should enhance international competitiveness and thereby increase employment. Strong incentives consisting of both carrots and sticks should be used to activate welfare recipients (“work over income”). Education should focus on the labour market. Human capital investments, labour market adaptation and work subsidies should help long-term unemployed, older workers and the partially
52Julie MacLeavy, ‘Workfare and Resistance in the US: The Quietude and Ineffectiveness of Progressive Welfare
Politics Post 1996’, The Geographical Journal 181, no. 3 (September 2015): 259–67, doi:10.1111/geoj.12092.
53 Lødemel and Moreira, Activation or Workfare?
54 Vis, ‘The Direction and Scope of Social Policy Change’, 154.
55 Martin Heidenreich and Patrizia Aurich-Beerheide’s article is an example of this use. Martin Heidenreich and
Patrizia Aurich-Beerheide, ‘European Worlds of Inclusive Activation: The Organisational Challenges of Coordinated Service Provision: European Worlds of Inclusive Activation’, International Journal of Social Welfare 23 (October 2014): S6–22, doi:10.1111/ijsw.12098.
56 Barbara Vis discusses several scholars who believe so in her article. See Vis, ‘The Direction and Scope of Social
Policy Change’.
57 Bertram, The Workfare State; MacLeavy, ‘Workfare and Resistance in the US’. 58 Weishaupt, From the Manpower Revolution to the Activation Paradigm, 135. 59 Ibid., 136,165.
60 Weishaupt, From the Manpower Revolution to the Activation Paradigm; Wilthagen and Tros, ‘The Concept of
15 disabled to obtain work. Health care should emphasise participation and the “return to work”. Child care support, part-time work and regulatory equalisation should help women to (re-)enter the labour market.61
Nevertheless, as Weishaupt notes, activation does not lead to singular forms of policy. Although scholars have attempted to define multiple ‘worlds of activation policy’62, most common is a simple
distinction between ‘Work First’ and ‘Human Capital Investment’ strategies. Here, ‘Work First’ or a ‘demanding’ approach refers to a programme where a combination of relatively short courses such as application training, coercion, and work in return for benefit is intended to help benefit recipients to obtain a job as soon as possible, whatever the quality, so that once in a job, the person will develop him- or herself autonomously. The ‘Human Capital Investment’ or ‘enabling’ approach relies more on long-term training, social integration and social support to prepare individuals as best as possible for participation in society, which may or may not be paid employment.63 Though implied by the distinction,
the two approaches do not necessarily mutually contradict. Clients closer to the labour market may benefit from a Work First approach, while a Human Capital Investment strategy may be better suited for the structural or long-term unemployed or persons with intense social problems.
In terms of the norms, ideas and values behind these policies, activation is based on the assumption that unemployment is largely due either to structural or individual reasons, rather than the demand slumps of the Keynesian model. Thus embracing supply-side economics, an increase in employment is seen as an improvement of the economy, thereby also helping others with a job. In this perspective, there is no such thing as a limited number of jobs. The individual cause for unemployment was a reintroduction of the idea of unwillingness. Under the activation paradigm, welfare recipients are assumed to be at least partly taking welfare voluntarily. Under a language of rights and duties, their responsibility for their lives should therefore be reactivated.64
The task for governments this way changed from (income) maintenance of its citizens to (sometimes coercively) helping citizens to activate themselves. As a result, the ‘formal’ policies are connected to an ‘operational’ transformation, spawning a distinct scholarly debate on the ‘governance of activation.’65 After all, a government wishing to activate benefit recipients rather than merely
61 Kersbergen and Hemerijck, ‘Two Decades of Change in Europe’; Green-Pedersen, Kersbergen, and Hemerijck,
‘Neo-Liberalism, the “Third Way” or What?’; Weishaupt, From the Manpower Revolution to the Activation Paradigm; Gielen and Otto, ‘Van welfare naar workfare’; Matthias Knuth and Flemming Larsen, ‘Increasing Roles for Municipalities in Delivering Public Employment Services: The Cases of Germany and Denmark’, European Journal of Social Security 12 (2010): 176–77.
62 Martin Heidenreich and Paolo R. Graziano, ‘Lost in Activation? The Governance of Activation Policies in
Europe: Guest Editorial’, International Journal of Social Welfare 23 (October 2014): S1–5, doi:10.1111/ijsw.12099; Heidenreich and Aurich-Beerheide, ‘European Worlds of Inclusive Activation’.
63 Heidenreich and Aurich-Beerheide, ‘European Worlds of Inclusive Activation’, S6–7; Vis, ‘The Direction and
Scope of Social Policy Change’, 166; Deborah Rice, ‘The Crafting of Local Activation Landscapes in the Netherlands. A Micro-Institutionalist Perspective’, in Crafting Local Welfare Landscapes, ed. Duco Bannink, Hans Bosselaar, and Willem Trommel (The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 2013), 27–46.
64 Weishaupt, From the Manpower Revolution to the Activation Paradigm, 194–201; Knuth and Larsen,
‘Increasing Roles for Municipalities in Delivering Public Employment Services’, 177.
16 maintaining their wellbeing needs a more intensive and ambitious intervention in their daily lives. Activating welfare states tend to individualise and make their treatment flexible, preferably ‘multidimensional’, ‘multilevel’ and ‘multistakeholder’66, which basically means that the system has to
be organised around the individual client rather than that the client has to conform to various bureaucracies. As a consequence, not only citizens, but also institutions need to be ‘activated’.67 Since
custom-tailoring might be most effective when done by local authorities – who would likely be better able to adapt to the local socio-economic conditions, and form integral policy and local partnerships – states all across the OECD and the EU have decentralised their welfare reintegration efforts.68 That a
more effective use of funds could be expected to lead to lower welfare spending helped the selling of the reform effort as well.69 Besides individualisation and decentralisation, many OECD members also
experimented with privatisation or marketization of employment services, and the creation of “one-stop shops”, that is the bringing together of various services in one building or one organisation.70
Under the influence of a New Public Management perspective, decentralisation did not necessarily lead to a reduction of central state power. In fact, states found they could increase control by organising it differently. Thus was created the process of ‘decentralised centralisation’71, ‘centralised
localism’72, or ‘implicit centralisation’73 where the introduction of decentralisation was combined with
enhanced steering techniques such as incentives, targets, bench-marking and intensified supervision, or simply by controlling the funding.74 Even where municipalities seemingly had more flexibility, political
scientist Roel in ‘t Veld has called decentralisation reform a “gilded cage”: while decentralisation is
no. 3 (July 2008): 332–33, doi:10.1017/S1474746408004302; Janet Newman, ‘The “double Dynamics” of Activation: Institutions, Citizens and the Remaking of Welfare Governance’, ed. Rik van Berkel, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 27, no. 9/10 (11 September 2007): 364–75, doi:10.1108/01443330710822066; Heidenreich and Graziano, ‘Lost in Activation?’; Heidenreich and Aurich-Beerheide, ‘European Worlds of Inclusive Activation’.
66 Heidenreich and Aurich-Beerheide, ‘European Worlds of Inclusive Activation’.
67 Newman, ‘The “double Dynamics” of Activation’; Berkel and Borghi, ‘Introduction’, 333.
68 Knuth and Larsen, ‘Increasing Roles for Municipalities in Delivering Public Employment Services’, 176–77;
Renate Minas, Sharon Wright, and Rik van Berkel, ‘Decentralization and Centralization: Governing the Activation of Social Assistance Recipients in Europe’, International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy 32, no. 5/6 (15 June 2012): 287, doi:10.1108/01443331211236989; Berkel and Borghi, ‘Introduction’, 335–36.
69 Sebastian Künzel, ‘The Local Dimension of Active Inclusion Policy’, Journal of European Social Policy 22,
no. 1 (February 2012): 3–16, doi:10.1177/0958928711425270; Klaartje Peters, ‘Decentralisaties in het lokaal bestuur: bestuurlijke lessen uit Denemarken’, Beleid en Maatschappij 41, no. 1 (2014): 80–88; Weishaupt, From the Manpower Revolution to the Activation Paradigm, 208–10; Duco Bannink et al., ‘De gedecentraliseerde integratie van het sociale domein’, Beleid en Maatschappij 41, no. 1 (2014): 65–73.
70 Berkel and Borghi, ‘Introduction’.
71 Knuth and Larsen, ‘Increasing Roles for Municipalities in Delivering Public Employment Services’, 177–78. 72 Heidenreich and Aurich-Beerheide, ‘European Worlds of Inclusive Activation’, S18; Colin Lindsay, Ronald W.
McQuaid, and Matthew Dutton, ‘Inter-Agency Cooperation and New Approaches to Employability’, Social Policy & Administration 42, no. 7 (December 2008): 721, doi:10.1111/j.1467-9515.2008.00634.x.
73 Minas, Wright, and Berkel, ‘Decentralization and Centralization’, 294.
74 Bannink et al., ‘De gedecentraliseerde integratie van het sociale domein’; Jurre van den Berg, ‘De spagaat van
17 meant to increase innovation through increased variety, an increased variety will also lead to cases of underperformance according to government standards. It is then very tempting to (re-)centralise or limit flexibility through new rules.75 This scenario is all the more likely because complex operations such as
decentralisation are bound to incur errors.76 Political scientists Duco Bannink and Ringo Ossewaarde
have even argued that any form of centralisation or decentralisation will lead to its own paradox. A system will always remain unsatisfactory, as each chosen form has undesirable side-effects.77
One of the issues in the discussion of the new activation approach, besides measuring the effectiveness of activation efforts,78 has therefore been the extent local authorities have actually made
use (and been able to make use of) the flexibility they are offered to develop their own profile. Sociologist Sebastian Künzel, having interviewed eighty case managers in four French and four German regions, has found indeed different forms of social activation policy – or even no social activation at all. He proposes four ideal types, each also with its own discourse, from the traditional social citizenship (assistance is a right for ‘citizens’, regardless of activation), to a market (job-oriented, efficient help of ‘clients’), bureaucratic (experts take care of ‘beneficiaries’ to support them), or participatory (help ‘autonomous citizens’ through partnerships) perspective on activation. Künzel argues it is often a combination of shared historical experience as well as the relative strength of advocates for a certain approach in the bureaucracy that explains the choice of the region in question.79
Scholars researching the Netherlands, however, find that diversification has been rather limited. Political scientist Deborah Rice, on the basis of qualitative interviews at municipalities across the Netherlands, has found a striking conformity among them.80 Dutch municipalities seem to willingly
copy one another, a practice also observed by sociologist Jurre Berg in a literature review. Even political scientist Willem Trommel, in his idealistic sketch of a future transformation to “localised welfare landscapes” with active local “crafting communities” that creatively work together to shape an effective and sustainable welfare system with its own “couleurs locales”, has to admit on the basis of the research of the other contributors to the edited volume, that municipalities did not experiment too much even where they had room to do so, and copied one another extensively.81 While part of this behaviour is
75 Roel in ’t Veld, ‘Decentralisatie revisited’, Beleid en Maatschappij 41, no. 1 (2014): 53–57.
76 Martijn Steen and Mark Twist, ‘Weerbaar of wendbaar zijn? Strategische opties in de voorbereiding op de drie
decentralisaties’, Beleid en Maatschappij 41, no. 1 (2014): 58–64.
77 Duco Bannink and Ringo Ossewaarde, ‘Decentralization: New Modes of Governance and Administrative
Responsibility’, Administration & Society 44, no. 5 (1 July 2012): 595–624, doi:10.1177/0095399711419096.
78 Rik van Berkel, ‘Social Assistance Dynamics in the Netherlands: Exploring the Sustainability of Independence
from Social Assistance via Labour Market Inclusion’, Social Policy and Society 6, no. 2 (April 2007): 127, doi:10.1017/S147474640600340X; Rik van Berkel and Eva Knies, ‘Performance Management, Caseloads and the Frontline Provision of Social Services’, Social Policy & Administration 50, no. 1 (January 2016): 59–78, doi:10.1111/spol.12150.
79 Künzel, ‘The Local Dimension of Active Inclusion Policy’.
80 Deborah Rice, Building Active Welfare States: How Policy Shapes Caseworker Practice (Amsterdam: VU
University Press, 2015).
81 Trommel, ‘A Study into Welfare Localization’; Willem Trommel, ‘The Birth of the Crafting Community’, in
18 explicable through the tight leash of incentives constructed in the social assistance law,82 part of it must
have been willingly. While Rice interprets the copycat behaviour of municipalities more positively as a search for “best practices”,83 Berg interprets it as “a self-centralising trend due to administrative
incapacity”.84 Most likely, it has been a mixture of both, depending on the (size of the) municipality.
Remarkably, no historian has studied the activation revolution and the associated ‘centralised decentralisation’,85 although historians are familiar with the paradox of a state attempting to steer
relatively decentralised units. Although the topic of the welfare state history is covered mostly by social scientists,86 historians have long stressed how fights over control over implementation and
administration – rather than the content of the laws themselves – has defined the history of the Dutch political system and that of the welfare state in particular. 87 In that literature the main focus has been on
the cooperation and competition between the state and a relatively vigorous but divided civil society. The historiography is divided on the relative importance of potential explanatory factors. One of the most central issues is on the role of the verzuiling (pillarisation) and ontzuiling (depillarisation) of society, namely the division of civil society in ideological/religious ‘pillars’ up to the sixties and the slow disappearance of these divisions since then.88 Competing with this societal process are scholars
that cite the fights between social classes89 or the competitive/cooperative relationship between state,
trade unions and employer organisations90 as explanatory factors for the welfare state formation process.
International Publishing, 2013), 157–71; Trommel, ‘In de verte gloort het lokale (en transnationale)’.
82 Berg, ‘De spagaat van de gedecentraliseerde eenheidsstaat’; Bannink et al., ‘De gedecentraliseerde integratie
van het sociale domein’.
83 Rice, Building Active Welfare States, 227.
84 “Een zelf-centraliserende tendens uit bestuurlijk onvermogen” See Berg, ‘De spagaat van de gedecentraliseerde
eenheidsstaat’, 211.
85 Again, to the best of my knowledge.
86 Peter Baldwin, when reviewing several major works on welfare history, opens his article with: “It takes a
yardstick, not the pathologist’s caliper, to measure the thickness of the glaze that commonly descends over historians’ eyes when the topic of the welfare state is broached.” Unfortunately, this situation has not changed much since. See: Baldwin, ‘The Welfare State for Historians. A Review Article’. In the Netherlands, Piet de Rooy was a major exception: P. de Rooy, Werklozenzorg en werkloosheidsbestrijding 1917-1940: Landelijk en Amsterdams beleid, de Nederlandse arbeidersbeweging 5 (Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 1978).
87 See for instance for a general history R.A.M. Aerts et al., Land van kleine gebaren: een politieke geschiedenis
van Nederland 1780-2012, 8e herz. dr. (Amsterdam: Boom, 2013).
88 Hupe, ‘Beyond Pillarization’; P. de Rooy, ‘Zes Studies over Verzuiling’, BMGN - Low Countries Historical
Review 110, no. 3 (1 January 1995): 380, doi:10.18352/bmgn-lchr.4059; Joop M. Roebroek and Mirjam Hertogh, ‘De beschavende invloed des tijds’: Twee eeuwen sociale politiek, verzorgingsstaat en sociale zekerheid in Nederland (Den Haag: VUGA, 1998); Doeko Bosscher, ‘Verlichting, Verzuiling, Vorst en Vaderland’, De Academische Boekengids, no. 56 (May 2006): 13–17; P. H. van Dam, Staat van verzuiling: over een Nederlandse mythe (Amsterdam: Wereldbibliotheek, 2011).
89Marcel Hoogenboom, Standenstrijd en zekerheid: een geschiedenis van oude orde en sociale zorg in Nederland
(Amsterdam: Boom, 2004); Swaan, In Care of the State.
90 Ton Kappelhof, ‘Omdat het historisch gegroeid is: De Londense Commissie-Van Rhijn en de ontwikkeling van
19 However, the role of municipalities within the welfare state is not as intensively documented.91 Most
historic studies on local social policy focus on the formative period before the creation of the national welfare state in the postwar period.92
The majority of studies on the recent transformations of the welfare state are theory-building efforts on the basis of secondary literature, as sociologists and political scientists are wont to do. Qualitative in-depth studies on the local level usually only cover a couple of years. Only quantitative studies seem to take a longer term view.93 Longer-term studies make sweeping general statements on
the implementation by municipalities mostly on the basis of logic and/or a few national government reports. No-one has researched how a municipality did or did not change its policy during the rise and development of the activation paradigm over the long run, and how it was effected by the decentralisation process. As a result, no-one knows how municipalities were changed by decentralisation policies over the long run. An in-depth historic case-study on a single municipality dealing with the activation revolution may therefore shed more light on the role of a Dutch municipality in the dynamics of the welfare state.
Research objective /Research framework
Therefore, this thesis’ research objective is to contribute to the debate on the ‘activation’ revolution, in particular concerning how the local level responded to and interacted with the national level, by means of a historical study of the implementation of national activation reforms in the municipality of Groningen between 1990 and 2016. In this study, I focus on three policy cycles of the national law on social assistance and reintegration between 1990 and 2016.
With my objective in mind, I opt for a theory-testing research design on the basis of a long-term qualitative policy history (see also figure 1.1.). Sewing together and comparing work on the welfare state, specific work on policy norms, rhetorical discourse analysis and (social) policy change and
110–37.
91 Dirk Jan Wolffram, ‘Social Politics and the Welfare State: An International and a Local Perspective’, Historisk
Tidskrift 127, no. 4 (2007): 679–93.
92 Ibid.; Stefan Couperus, Christianne Smit, and Dirk Jan Wolffram, eds., In Control of the City: Local Elites and
the Dynamics of Urban Politics, 1800 - 1960, Groningen Studies in Cultural Change 28 (Leuven: Peeters, 2007); Stefan Couperus, ‘Backstage Politics. Municipal Directors and Technocratic Ambitions in Amsterdam, 1916-1930’, in In Control of the City: Local Elites and the Dynamics of Urban Politics, 1800 - 1960, ed. Stefan Couperus, Christianne Smit, and Dirk Jan Wolffram, Groningen Studies in Cultural Change 28 (Leuven: Peeters, 2007), 175–90; Rooy, Werklozenzorg en werkloosheidsbestrijding 1917-1940; Rooy, ‘Zes Studies over Verzuiling’.
93 Such as Berkel, ‘Social Assistance Dynamics in the Netherlands’; Berkel and Knies, ‘Performance Management,
20 implementation, I thereby create a specific theoretical toolbox for the evaluation of the autonomy of municipalities during policy cycles [A]. This conceptual model allows me to compare and understand the alignment of policy, both espoused and in practice, between the national and the local level in the policy process during three legal transformations of Social Assistance [B]. Comparing the analysis on the extent of alignment during these transformations allows me to tell something both on the extent Groningen has implemented an activation paradigm, as well as the extent a local couleure locale has existed during the past two-and-a-half decade [C]. It also allows me to compare this history with what has been written in the literature on the activation paradigm.
Figure 1.1. Research framework
The way the research design framework model is structured is drawn from Piet Verschuren and Hans Doorewaard. The research framework is structured in three sections: I have divided them into A, B and C, and given each of them a colour. Each section is based on a comparison, expressed by a dotted line: between bodies of literature, leading towards a conceptual model (A), between the conceptual model and each of the research objects, leading to analyses (B), and between the analyses leading towards a conclusion (C).
Source: Petrus Johannus Maria Verschuren and Hans Doorewaard, Designing a Research Project, ed. Michelle Mellion, trans. R. L. Poper, 2nd ed. (The Hague: Eleven International Publishing, 2010).
21 overhaul of social assistance originates with the third governing coalition headed by Ruud Lubbers (Christian-Democrats – Labour coalition, from 1989 until 1994).
Methodologically, Groningen performs the role of a “most likely case” for deviance from national instructions, for Groningen takes up a special position in Dutch history. It is the only region in the Netherlands where a single city dominates a wide region. It is relatively large in the Dutch context, but otherwise not merely as significant as cities such as Rotterdam, Amsterdam, The Hague or Utrecht. As is visible in table 1.1., Groningen is smaller than the four largest cities, but could before 2000 arguably still compare itself to Utrecht. Almost twice the size of Zwolle, Emmen and Leeuwarden, its potential competitors in the region, Groningen has had a historic tendency to attempt to punch above its weight in national influence and dabble in independent policymaking.94
Table 1.1. Development of the population in large Dutch municipalities; total population on
January 1.
Year Amsterdam Rotterdam The Hague Utrecht Groningen Emmen Zwolle Leeuwarden
1985 675579 571081 443456 229969 168119 91357 88052 85203 1990 695162 579179 441506 230358 167872 92807 94131 85570 1995 722230 598239 442937 235625 170658 93752 100160 87945 2000 731288 592673 441094 233667 173139 105972 105801 88887 2005 742783 596407 472096 275258 180604 108617 111900 91749 2010 767457 593049 488553 307081 187298 109491 119030 94073 2015 821752 623652 514861 334176 200336 107775 123861 107691
Selection: G4 and towns in the four northern provinces with more than 100.000 inhabitants.
Source: ‘Bevolkingsontwikkeling; levendgeborenen, overledenen en migratie per regio’, Centraal bureau voor de Statistiek: Statline, http://statline.cbs.nl/Statweb/ (accessed May 19, 2017).
Economically, Groningen was until the early twentieth century mainly a staple town for the wider region, not only performing the role of a centre of grain trade, but also treating its inhabitants through its hospitals, lending them money through banking establishments, and educating farmer’s sons and daughters through its university.95 In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Groningen was one of
the richest and most highly developed regions in the Netherlands, focusing mostly on modern agriculture and agriculturally-derived industry such as strawboard, sugar refinement and potato starch. Each soil
94 Duijvendak and Vries, Stad van het Noorden.
95 Henk Hurenkamp, ‘Groningen van stadstaat tot stad van het noorden’, in Stad en Regio, ed. Geurt Collenteur et
22 type developed its own societal form, from colonial peat lands to the east, highly developed and fertile clay lands in the north to a more traditional sandy south.96
The large inequality, diversity and high development of the region during the nineteenth and early twentieth century helped to make it a breeding ground for new ideas, from Liberalism in both church and society, Fundamentalism in the reformed church, Secularism, to both Communism and Socialism, which then spread to the rest of the Netherlands.97 Continuing this heritage, Groningen is
today the most secular province of the Netherlands,98 and has remained relatively left-wing throughout
the twentieth and twenty-first century.99 As one can also see in table 1.2, the municipality of Groningen
has consistently been situated more to the left of the political spectrum than the national level at least since the seventies.
When agriculture all across the world had serious difficulties in the nineteen twenties and thirties, Groningen went into relative decline. When most of its industry went bankrupt in the sixties, seventies and eighties, the relative decline turned into an absolute decline.100 Partly due to its peripheral
location, it took longer for Groningen than for some other regions to recover employment through services, even though it received support in the form of subsidies both from The Hague as well as Brussels.101 Even though the discovery of natural gas in the late fifties partly compensated for this
decline, the additional state revenues were spent nation-wide so that the province and city of Groningen did not profit exceptionally.102
As a result, Groningen is an interesting case for the study of policy translation processes. Because of its peripheral location and its history, Groningen would likely be relatively independent-minded and critical, although at the same time quite dependent on financial support from The Hague.
96 John van Zuthem, ‘Een samenleving met schakeringen’, in Geschiedenis van Groningen III: nieuwste tijd -
heden, ed. M.G.J. Duijvendak (Zwolle: Waanders Uitgevers; Stichting Erven A. de Jager, 2009), 123–205.
97 Ibid.
98 Hans Schmeets, ‘De religieuze kaart van Nederland, 2010-2015’ (Den Haag: Centraal Bureau voor de Statistiek,
December 2016), 7, https://www.cbs.nl/nl-nl/publicatie/2016/51/de-religieuze-kaart-van-nederland-2010-2015.
99 Duijvendak and Vries, Stad van het Noorden; Duijvendak, Geschiedenis van Groningen III.
100 Maarten Duijvendak, ‘4: Economisch middelpunt’, in Stad van het Noorden: Groningen in de twintigste eeuw,
ed. Maarten Gerrit Jan Duijvendak and Bart de Vries, Groninger historische reeks 25 (Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum, 2003), 89–118; Maarten Duijvendak, ‘8: Onzekere tijden’, in Stad van het Noorden: Groningen in de twintigste eeuw, ed. Maarten Gerrit Jan Duijvendak and Bart de Vries, Groninger historische reeks 25 (Assen: Koninklijke Van Gorcum, 2003), 263–308.
101 Doeko Bosscher, ‘Groningen herontdekt zichzelf’, in Geschiedenis van Groningen III: nieuwste tijd - heden,
ed. M.G.J. Duijvendak (Zwolle: Waanders Uitgevers; Stichting Erven A. de Jager, 2009), 301–94.
102 Duijvendak and Vries, Stad van het Noorden; Duijvendak, Geschiedenis van Groningen III, 314–21; Maarten
23
Table 1.2 Comparing national and local coalitions
Year national coalition Coalition Political inclination Minister Social Affairs Year local elections Coalition Groningen Political inclination Alder(wo)man Social Affairs 1973 PvdA, PPR, D66, leftist members of the KVP en ARP Left J. Boersma (ARP) 1974 PvdA, D66, CPN, PPR Left J. Simons (CPN); Th. Wits (CPN)
1978 CDA, VVD Centre-right W. Albeda (CDA) 1978 PvdA, D66, CPN, PPR, PSP Left Th. Wits (CPN) 1981 CDA, PvdA, D66
Centre-left J. den Uijl (PvdA) 1982 CDA, VVD Centre-right J. de Koning
(CDA)
1982 PvdA, CDA Centre-left A. Berger (CDA) 1986 CDA, VVD Centre-right J. de Koning
(CDA)
1986 PvdA, CDA Centre-left L. Westerhoff (PvdA) 1990 CDA, PvdA Centre-left B. de Vries
(CDA) 1990 PvdA, D66, CDA Centre-left P. Huisman (till 1992) (PvdA); K. Swaak (PvdA) 1994 PvdA, VVD, D66 Progressive centre A. Melkert (PvdA) 1994 PvdA, D66, CDA Centre-left K. Swaak (PvdA) 1998 PvdA, VVD, D66 Progressive centre K. de Vries (1998-2000) (PvdA); W. Vermeend (PvdA) (2000-2002) 1998 PvdA, CDA, VVD Centre T. Bruinsma (PvdA) 2002 CDA, VVD, LPF
Centre-right A.J. de Geus (CDA) 2002 PvdA, CDA, VVD, GroenLinks Centre K. Schuiling (VVD) 2003 CDA, VVD, D66
Centre-right A.J. de Geus (CDA) 2006 CDA, VVD Centre-right A.J. de Geus
(CDA) 2006 PvdA, SP, GroenLinks Left P. Verschuren (SP) 2007 CDA, PvdA, CU Centre-left P.H. Donner (CDA) 2010 VVD, CDA (PVV) Right H. Kamp (VVD) 2010 PvdA, D66, SP, GroenLinks Left E. Pastoor (PvdA) 2012 VVD, PvdA Progressive centre L. Asscher (PvdA) 2012 (new coalition) PvdA, D66, SP, VVD, CDA Centre D. Istha (PvdA) 2014 D66, PvdA, VVD, GroenLinks Progressive Centre M. Gijsbertsen (GroenLinks)
