Introduction

Integration of social and employment policies has been a highly topical issue over past decades in Europe. Faced with the complex task of facilitating the return to employment of jobless people with multiple barriers to work, several countries have developed integrated structures for delivering labour market and social support. ‘One stop-shops’, ‘integrated jobcenters’ and ‘interagency collaboration’ are some of the tools that are being developed in this context (Askim et al, 2011). These initiatives have taken different shapes in different countries. In some countries, such as in the UK, ‘one-stop’ jobcentres integrate the tasks of benefit payment and employment services, while in others, like in Denmark, the focus has been limited to activation and job-related services.

In spite of these differences, there are striking similarities in the motivations put forward by governments for these reforms. In many European countries the search for integrated services has been part of a broader trend towards the coordination of the public sector. The integration of social and employment policies clearly shares many of the goals of public sector coordination. Among these can be cited the aims to make better use of money by pooling resources and competences, to create more efficient services and to simplify clients’ access to services (Pollitt, 2003).

In the field of the welfare state, coordination has also emerged in close relationship with the turn to activation and the new emphasis on labour market integration (van Berkel et al, 2011). In this context, the initial goal was generally to widen access to employment-related services to all categories of benefit claimants, including those on social assistance and incapacity-related benefits, and to offer support based on individuals’ needs rather than on benefit entitlement (Newman, 2007; van Berkel et al, 2011). Further, in countries where responsibilities for benefits and employment services were traditionally divided among a number of separate actors, a second frequent motivation was to limit a sort of ‘institutional egoism’ that led actors to prioritise their own interests over the overall goal of labour market integration.

Against this background, this article examines the capacity of reforms geared towards the integration of social and employment policies to effectively deliver their multiple objectives. Its focus is primarily on two goals that were central in most reforms: increasing responsiveness to individual needs and strengthening central control.