Introduction

Previous chapters of the book have explored and problematized the justificatory narratives surrounding and paving the way for welfare to work (WTW) programmes. Instead of investigating how such policies are being justified, this chapter digs into some of the ways in which recent WTW programmes in Denmark have avoided facing the imperative of public justification. It analyses how the scope of some WTW policies have been radically extended in quite subtle ways, without having to be publicly scrutinized and justified. Put differently, this chapter analyses politics that does not present itself as politics.

The research endeavour in the chapter is inspired by a recent proliferation of what has been termed ‘management and governance studies’ (Brodkin, 2012; Brodkin and Marston, 2013). Such studies analyse how organizational changes in the management and governance of street-level organizations affect policies (for example, Bjørnholt and Larsen, 2014). For instance, Soss and colleagues (2011) documented in their study of Florida Work Regions how a New Public Management reform, officially aiming at creating a more efficient and better working system through the use of performance measures, in practice led to a marked increase in the use of sanctions – particularly towards the most vulnerable clients. Likewise, Brodkin (2011) questioned the apparent success of a managerial welfare reform in Chicago that linked outcome measurement to fiscal incentives for the frontline workers, through an ethnographic investigation of the ways in which the employees actually produced these performances. This chapter broadens this research agenda in two ways. Firstly, by arguing that there are many different ways apart from governance and management reforms in which WTW policies are being expanded through other means than traditional policy reforms. The growing sophistication of the available data and methods for designing, measuring and implementing new policies also marks new avenues, beyond traditional policy or governance reforms, for expanding and promoting policies through technical and seemingly objective measures. Secondly, the goal is to show how piecemeal and technical adjustments to policies are not only affecting the policies enacted by frontline workers of the welfare state, but also have wider consequences for how WTW policies are justified.