**5. Playful state power: Health promotion through identity-games**

The last case demonstrates the paradox of power by analysing recent campaigns for health promotion in Denmark. In this national context, during the last twenty years, national health plans have displayed a clearly anti-authoritarian and culturally sensitive character. *The National Health Plan* launched in 1999, thus made significant efforts to distinguish itself from earlier 'individualizing' and 'excessively authoritarian' health promotion strategies. Lars Thorup Larsen (2003: 9) observes that this health plan rejects the tendency to 'blame the victim' and adopts a concept of 'the everyday environment' as the essential object for campaign measures. This form of health campaign tries to avoid targeting the lifestyles of citizens in a direct, negative and individualizing fashion. Instead, it emphasizes the potential of stimulating the surroundings of the individuals in need of change, to become indirect promoters of health. Rather than intervening by means of centralized state regulation, the objective is to engage local municipalities and civil society in the struggle for 'healthier environments'. This network-type governmental strategy is directed at 'the environment' in a very broad sense, as it seeks to mobilize public institutions under the municipalities, schools, local communities, workplaces, and even group dynamics inside companies—hereby transgressing public/private divisions and sector boundaries. In short, it is a campaign that aims to make other agents undertake their own 'micro-campaigns'. The range of problems arising from this aspiration to govern entities which are self-governing reflects well what I described as the paradox of power.

In 2007, the Danish health authorities invented a new board game, *Health at Play*, in collaboration with the private parents' association Schools and Society. Earlier Danish public health campaigns were allegedly too individualizing and tutelary, and the game presents itself as anti-authoritarian, 'playful', sensitive to citizens' opinions, and transgressing traditional sector boundaries (National Board of Health, 2007). *Health at Play* is to be played by parents, both alone or with their children, and it can be played at meetings between parents supervised by a school teacher. The instruction manual states that there is no ambition to force everyone live in the same way, and that a modern society should always leave room for diversity.

As Niels Åkerstrøm Andersen has argued, however, the aim of Health at Play' is indeed to shape the lives of families so that their activities conform more closely to governmental health objectives (Andersen 2008). The core of the game is a set of cards with questions about personal attitudes towards health issues that the players can choose to either agree or disagree with. One attitude might be "parents are the most important role models for children" and the participants must then seek to reach a common agreement on this issue. One may certainly question if 'game' is an adequate name for this initiative which offers no principle of scoring points and has no winners and losers (possible except for 'our health').

Paradoxes of Welfare: Universality, Truth, and Power in Modern Welfare Provision 79

itself according to the rationality of individuals and groups. Consequently the normative standards to be achieved cannot be imposed authoritatively from 'above' but are rather coproduced by very the domain to be governed itself. The case demonstrates how the problem of exercising state power is dealt with by invoking new practices of 'anti-authoritative' and 'user-sensitive' health promotion. This observation constitutes an analytical challenge for critical research from a Foucaultian or broader post structural perspective. The kind of antiauthoritarian campaign strategy evident in *Health at Play* reflects an understanding of knowledge, identity and power a kin to key tenets of 'critical thinking' such as post structural theorizing, critical pedagogy, and even governmentality studies. What hereby begins to emerge is a circular logic between power and critique in which critical thinking is adopted by authorities that may instrumentalize it for producing new strategies of government. By this token, it becomes increasingly difficult to make a clear distinction between who are 'the radical critics' and who are on the side of 'bureaucratic power'. In other words, a perhaps uncomfortable blurring of the hitherto so self-assuring dichotomy between the 'progressive critics' and the 'representatives of bureaucratic state power' is well

To sum up, in negotiating the paradox of power the recent Danish health campaign takes up a rather complex thinking on power and government which evinces parallels to poststructural concepts of power. Firstly, the campaign articulates a conceptualization of power as mobile and reversible series of 'playful' micro-relations. Secondly, it views power as nonsubjective, productive and as non-localizable within traditional sector demarcations (to be inscribed into various 'environments', agents and locales). Thirdly, the campaign acknowledges that citizen groups and professionals are guided by their particular views and values which will shape the effects of playing about health. Consequently the normative standards to be achieved cannot be imposed authoritatively from 'above' but are rather co-

By way of conclusion, I will briefly offer some thoughts on how governmental paradoxes may be handled, analytically as well as practically. It should be clear that the analytical framework adopted here views paradoxes as a permanent and inevitable feature of modern welfare provision, and modern governing more broadly. Instructive is perhaps to point out some possible approaches to governmental paradoxes that runs counter to a Foucaultian/governmentality, and which we need to take account of in terms of their

It is straightforward to explain welfare paradoxes as produced by a mismatch and asymmetry between the institution and its object. We may, for instance, imagine cases where welfare institutions and their professionals are guided by a particular 'doxa', i.e. a set of self-evident and partly implicit ideas, which contrasts with how their clients perceive themselves and their problems. It has been described how social workers at projects for job training and rehabilitation maintain a therapeutic doxa which focuses on personal issues and personal development although they are confronted by clients who believe that their essential problem is related to professional qualifications and possibilities at the labour market (Mik-Meyer, 2006). The approach of the researcher is here one of making explicit to the participants that they are caught up within the doxa, and this 'unveiling' may ameliorate

produced by very the domain to be governed itself.

shortcomings as well as their possibilities.

**6. The permanence and potentials of governmental paradoxes** 

under way.

The aim is to settle responsibilities for children's health between parents, school and pupils. But *Health at Play* uses no sanctions or control measures; it simply seeks to generate debate and reflections, and establish commonly shared value—in short, it is directed at individuals' identity-work.

The game is a tool used by the health authorities to navigate between respecting the autonomy of individual families and promoting intensified health aspirations of governmental authorities. It does so by oscillating between imagined, 'playful' commitments and real, binding commitments. The participants can choose to merely entertain various commitments to a healthier life style, but they may also decide to make the agreements binding and inscribe them into a contract that is supposed to count in real life. By this token, the game suddenly turns into the much more serious and far-reaching 'game' of changing life style. One may thus say that the game represents the playful part of a multi-pronged strategy for health promotion which also consists of traditional information campaigns, efforts to make healthy food available at the canteens public schools, and more.

*Health at Play* makes use of a noticeably cross-sector approach. The health authorities use the game to make incursions into the schools and the school-parent relation in their attempt to mobilize new agents to promote health objectives. The health authorities thus envision power as spanning across sectors and institutions. They recognize the need to take into consideration and subscribe to practices and strategies already operating within those domains, for instance in the schools. Thus, the health authorities seem to recognize that they cannot themselves meet their aims for health promotion. Or, as Andersen observes, the health authorities acknowledge that there is no place where power may be possessed (2008: 159). The health campaign, that is, displays a particular way of overcoming the paradox of power (how to govern that which is autonomous and self-governing). Indeed, *the authorities* understand that power cannot be exercised *with authority.* It cannot be imposed from 'above' or 'from outside' but must be realized indirectly, by the involved agents themselves, engaged in 'playful' and fluid micro-relations. In this way, the game displays some rather advanced reflections on how to exercise power in a modern context. It thus acknowledges that power must be inherent to its object, here conceived as a multiplicity of social forces that will shape and direct the campaign's strategic goals in diverse and undeterminable ways

In thus attempting to channel their efforts through a number of indirect relations, the Danish national health authorities display some symptoms of what Foucault called 'the State phobia' They do not just harbour scepticism towards state power; they engages in a series of sceptical reflections about government agencies that might govern 'too much' and without respect for, or with insufficient knowledge of, the processes and domains of government (Rose & Miller, 1992). One may say that the health authorities reflect a conception of power that in a sense pursues Foucault's (methodological) injunction to 'cut off the King's head' and clearly emphasizes the decentred micro-physics of power (Foucault, 1980a: 121). Power is conceived of as an attempt to sway others to act by stimulating their identity work, acknowledging that the health authorities do not constitute the source of power and its effects. What is at stake, then, are strategies that depend upon others' strategies that need to be taken into account.

The study observed how Danish national health authorities navigates the paradox of power by conceptualizing power as something that must be exercised by modelling and fine tuning

The aim is to settle responsibilities for children's health between parents, school and pupils. But *Health at Play* uses no sanctions or control measures; it simply seeks to generate debate and reflections, and establish commonly shared value—in short, it is directed at individuals'

The game is a tool used by the health authorities to navigate between respecting the autonomy of individual families and promoting intensified health aspirations of governmental authorities. It does so by oscillating between imagined, 'playful' commitments and real, binding commitments. The participants can choose to merely entertain various commitments to a healthier life style, but they may also decide to make the agreements binding and inscribe them into a contract that is supposed to count in real life. By this token, the game suddenly turns into the much more serious and far-reaching 'game' of changing life style. One may thus say that the game represents the playful part of a multi-pronged strategy for health promotion which also consists of traditional information campaigns, efforts to make

*Health at Play* makes use of a noticeably cross-sector approach. The health authorities use the game to make incursions into the schools and the school-parent relation in their attempt to mobilize new agents to promote health objectives. The health authorities thus envision power as spanning across sectors and institutions. They recognize the need to take into consideration and subscribe to practices and strategies already operating within those domains, for instance in the schools. Thus, the health authorities seem to recognize that they cannot themselves meet their aims for health promotion. Or, as Andersen observes, the health authorities acknowledge that there is no place where power may be possessed (2008: 159). The health campaign, that is, displays a particular way of overcoming the paradox of power (how to govern that which is autonomous and self-governing). Indeed, *the authorities* understand that power cannot be exercised *with authority.* It cannot be imposed from 'above' or 'from outside' but must be realized indirectly, by the involved agents themselves, engaged in 'playful' and fluid micro-relations. In this way, the game displays some rather advanced reflections on how to exercise power in a modern context. It thus acknowledges that power must be inherent to its object, here conceived as a multiplicity of social forces that will shape

healthy food available at the canteens public schools, and more.

and direct the campaign's strategic goals in diverse and undeterminable ways

strategies that need to be taken into account.

In thus attempting to channel their efforts through a number of indirect relations, the Danish national health authorities display some symptoms of what Foucault called 'the State phobia' They do not just harbour scepticism towards state power; they engages in a series of sceptical reflections about government agencies that might govern 'too much' and without respect for, or with insufficient knowledge of, the processes and domains of government (Rose & Miller, 1992). One may say that the health authorities reflect a conception of power that in a sense pursues Foucault's (methodological) injunction to 'cut off the King's head' and clearly emphasizes the decentred micro-physics of power (Foucault, 1980a: 121). Power is conceived of as an attempt to sway others to act by stimulating their identity work, acknowledging that the health authorities do not constitute the source of power and its effects. What is at stake, then, are strategies that depend upon others'

The study observed how Danish national health authorities navigates the paradox of power by conceptualizing power as something that must be exercised by modelling and fine tuning

identity-work.

itself according to the rationality of individuals and groups. Consequently the normative standards to be achieved cannot be imposed authoritatively from 'above' but are rather coproduced by very the domain to be governed itself. The case demonstrates how the problem of exercising state power is dealt with by invoking new practices of 'anti-authoritative' and 'user-sensitive' health promotion. This observation constitutes an analytical challenge for critical research from a Foucaultian or broader post structural perspective. The kind of antiauthoritarian campaign strategy evident in *Health at Play* reflects an understanding of knowledge, identity and power a kin to key tenets of 'critical thinking' such as post structural theorizing, critical pedagogy, and even governmentality studies. What hereby begins to emerge is a circular logic between power and critique in which critical thinking is adopted by authorities that may instrumentalize it for producing new strategies of government. By this token, it becomes increasingly difficult to make a clear distinction between who are 'the radical critics' and who are on the side of 'bureaucratic power'. In other words, a perhaps uncomfortable blurring of the hitherto so self-assuring dichotomy between the 'progressive critics' and the 'representatives of bureaucratic state power' is well under way.

To sum up, in negotiating the paradox of power the recent Danish health campaign takes up a rather complex thinking on power and government which evinces parallels to poststructural concepts of power. Firstly, the campaign articulates a conceptualization of power as mobile and reversible series of 'playful' micro-relations. Secondly, it views power as nonsubjective, productive and as non-localizable within traditional sector demarcations (to be inscribed into various 'environments', agents and locales). Thirdly, the campaign acknowledges that citizen groups and professionals are guided by their particular views and values which will shape the effects of playing about health. Consequently the normative standards to be achieved cannot be imposed authoritatively from 'above' but are rather coproduced by very the domain to be governed itself.

## **6. The permanence and potentials of governmental paradoxes**

By way of conclusion, I will briefly offer some thoughts on how governmental paradoxes may be handled, analytically as well as practically. It should be clear that the analytical framework adopted here views paradoxes as a permanent and inevitable feature of modern welfare provision, and modern governing more broadly. Instructive is perhaps to point out some possible approaches to governmental paradoxes that runs counter to a Foucaultian/governmentality, and which we need to take account of in terms of their shortcomings as well as their possibilities.

It is straightforward to explain welfare paradoxes as produced by a mismatch and asymmetry between the institution and its object. We may, for instance, imagine cases where welfare institutions and their professionals are guided by a particular 'doxa', i.e. a set of self-evident and partly implicit ideas, which contrasts with how their clients perceive themselves and their problems. It has been described how social workers at projects for job training and rehabilitation maintain a therapeutic doxa which focuses on personal issues and personal development although they are confronted by clients who believe that their essential problem is related to professional qualifications and possibilities at the labour market (Mik-Meyer, 2006). The approach of the researcher is here one of making explicit to the participants that they are caught up within the doxa, and this 'unveiling' may ameliorate

Paradoxes of Welfare: Universality, Truth, and Power in Modern Welfare Provision 81

is unsuited to capture and contribute to the management of public welfare organisations (Osborne, 2006). Proponents of NPM have to some extent themselves provoked this critique, since the most radical advocates have questioned the legitimacy of key elements in democratic regulation of public welfare services, arguing that it imposes unreasonable constraints upon the management of public services (Meier, 1997). Conversely, observers who are sceptical against the adoption of NPM-principles have argued that there is a fundamental tension between the professional ethics of welfare professionals and MPM which is blind to these ethics because of its key tenets, i.e. its emphasis on economic efficiency, the maintenance of performance standards, and the promotion of management as

The debates about the benefits and the problems of NPM invoke the paradox of universality, but this time predominantly in terms of the more specific problem of how welfare services can be at one and same time guided by particular professional values and by universal standards. This paradox is further intensified by the emergence of NPM as it attempts to give 'management' the status of an autonomous professional rationality put one the same footing as the other significant professional logics of modern welfare provision: medicine, pedagogy, and psychology. One influential tenet of NPM (and managerialism more broadly) is the demand that 'managers must be given the right to manage', as observed by Pollitt (1993: 3). This is the idea that managers cannot perform effective management unless they are granted reasonable room for manoeuvre. From this follows the assertion that also public sector managers must enjoy the freedom to decide over the use of organisational resources in order to maximise desired performances. But this 'liberated manager' of welfare production constitutes a paradoxical figure: He is envisioned as a 'neutral' promoter of a particular managerial rationality! The paradox is produced by a peculiar rewinding of the classic distinction between management and administration (Clarke & Newman, 1995: 64). The manager was seen as an active decision maker, whereas the administrator merely implemented decisions made elsewhere in an impartial fashion. However, NPM now attributes 'impartial implementation' to the manager's side of the distinction turning it paradoxical. What emerges is the welfare manager 'who needs managerial freedom to

Let us become a bit more specific about this paradoxical welfare manager. One the one hand, he represent a particular managerial rationality which revolves around the goal of achieving increased productivity. Key measures are the setting of performance targets, the instalment of tighter financial control and the creation of more transparency and greater comparability with respect to achievements. On the other hand, the manager is envisioned as a 'neutral' agent who will simply assist welfare organisations in achieving their particular goals which are rooted in particular professional values. Here, the image of the welfare manager is one of an administrative 'relay' or a 'catalyst' who use purportedly neutral technologies of optimization. By this I mean that the figure of the neutral manager entails a view of technologies as tools that may realize or unleash 'latent resources' without influencing or fundamentally shaping the content of welfare services in the process. The paradox of the liberated manager is, in brief, that he figures as at the same time an agent of a

The paradox of the concomitant valuation of the universal and the particular reappears, however, in yet another version under NPM. Here, we start by observing that NPM is often

new, managerial freedom and as a neutral, administrative relay.

an independent activity.

implement others' decisions'.

the state of affairs by illuminating the fundamental contradictions that generate conflicts and resistance. The researcher who takes this approach is typically particularly attentive to the asymmetries between the professionals in welfare institutions vis-á-vis citizens and users with respect to their possibilities for defining welfare values, programs, and methods.

A prominent solution to the problem of closure and self-referential values in welfare services is the practically oriented reform literature termed *New Public Management* (NPM) which has received great attention in the last two decades (Lane, 2003; Ferlie et al., 1996; Bozeman, 1993). For this reason we will spent some time discussing NPM in terms of its paradoxyfying and deparadoxyfying effects. In NPM, the general approach to public management is one of identification of problems and achievement of solutions through the choice of adequate managerial tools. There is an assumption that it is possible to clarify the explanatory causes for paradoxes, list alternative solutions, make calculations of costs, gains and risks, and, on this basis, choose a specific managerial instrument. However, critics have claimed that *New Public Management* has an over-optimistic trust in hard line technologybased control of welfare services, and this observation has relevance for our discussion of the management of paradoxes in welfare provision. It is thus interesting that NPMperspective by and large view technologies as tools to carry out managers' objectives, solve problems and overcoming paradoxes. The possibility that technologies might in themselves create new paradoxes or intensify existing ones is rarely considered in this literature. This point was made by Andersen and Thygesen who demonstrated how NPM technologies entail a diversity of antagonistic images of organisations, while paying particular attention to how a technology of goal-steering rendered organisations' relation to their environment highly ambiguous or even 'polyphonic' (Thygesen & Andersen, 2007).

As outlined earlier, the concept of paradoxes allows us to go beyond the immediately observable lines of conflict and communicated dilemmas to explore which kind of logical paradoxes that are embedded in specific areas of welfare provision. We further recall that paradoxes are created from the drawing of distinctions that constitute logically impossible dualities which communication is forced to unfold, reformulate and displace. The concept thus allows us to explore how services reforms and new managerial strategies for welfare management need to unfold and 'deparadoxify' the paradoxes of welfare, for instance by inventing new concepts that seek to render the paradoxes less urgent and threatening. We shall follow this approach in the following discussion of NPM as a regime for reform of welfare services. Indeed, NPM may be conceived as a series of concepts and techniques for deparadoxification that never accomplish dissolving or an annulment of the paradoxes but rather have as their effect a dislocation of them, sometimes resulting in the emergence of reshaped and intensified versions of the paradoxes. It is thus telling that NPM often stages itself as a tool to overcome and dissolve starkly articulated juxtapositions between universality versus particularism, rule-bound versus flexible, neutrality versus parochial interests, economic efficiency versus welfare professionalism, managers versus employees, compliance versus commitment, and centralised control versus local freedom. The typical approach of NPM is that it is possible to override or even dissolve the oppositions.

NPM has received lots of critique, many of which are based upon the claim that this managerial regime implies an import into welfare organisations of economic and managerial rationalities that are fundamentally foreign to public welfare provision. In its starkest version, the critique has portrayed NPM as a one-dimensional managerialism which

the state of affairs by illuminating the fundamental contradictions that generate conflicts and resistance. The researcher who takes this approach is typically particularly attentive to the asymmetries between the professionals in welfare institutions vis-á-vis citizens and users with respect to their possibilities for defining welfare values, programs, and methods. A prominent solution to the problem of closure and self-referential values in welfare services is the practically oriented reform literature termed *New Public Management* (NPM) which has received great attention in the last two decades (Lane, 2003; Ferlie et al., 1996; Bozeman, 1993). For this reason we will spent some time discussing NPM in terms of its paradoxyfying and deparadoxyfying effects. In NPM, the general approach to public management is one of identification of problems and achievement of solutions through the choice of adequate managerial tools. There is an assumption that it is possible to clarify the explanatory causes for paradoxes, list alternative solutions, make calculations of costs, gains and risks, and, on this basis, choose a specific managerial instrument. However, critics have claimed that *New Public Management* has an over-optimistic trust in hard line technologybased control of welfare services, and this observation has relevance for our discussion of the management of paradoxes in welfare provision. It is thus interesting that NPMperspective by and large view technologies as tools to carry out managers' objectives, solve problems and overcoming paradoxes. The possibility that technologies might in themselves create new paradoxes or intensify existing ones is rarely considered in this literature. This point was made by Andersen and Thygesen who demonstrated how NPM technologies entail a diversity of antagonistic images of organisations, while paying particular attention to how a technology of goal-steering rendered organisations' relation to their environment

highly ambiguous or even 'polyphonic' (Thygesen & Andersen, 2007).

As outlined earlier, the concept of paradoxes allows us to go beyond the immediately observable lines of conflict and communicated dilemmas to explore which kind of logical paradoxes that are embedded in specific areas of welfare provision. We further recall that paradoxes are created from the drawing of distinctions that constitute logically impossible dualities which communication is forced to unfold, reformulate and displace. The concept thus allows us to explore how services reforms and new managerial strategies for welfare management need to unfold and 'deparadoxify' the paradoxes of welfare, for instance by inventing new concepts that seek to render the paradoxes less urgent and threatening. We shall follow this approach in the following discussion of NPM as a regime for reform of welfare services. Indeed, NPM may be conceived as a series of concepts and techniques for deparadoxification that never accomplish dissolving or an annulment of the paradoxes but rather have as their effect a dislocation of them, sometimes resulting in the emergence of reshaped and intensified versions of the paradoxes. It is thus telling that NPM often stages itself as a tool to overcome and dissolve starkly articulated juxtapositions between universality versus particularism, rule-bound versus flexible, neutrality versus parochial interests, economic efficiency versus welfare professionalism, managers versus employees, compliance versus commitment, and centralised control versus local freedom. The typical

approach of NPM is that it is possible to override or even dissolve the oppositions.

NPM has received lots of critique, many of which are based upon the claim that this managerial regime implies an import into welfare organisations of economic and managerial rationalities that are fundamentally foreign to public welfare provision. In its starkest version, the critique has portrayed NPM as a one-dimensional managerialism which is unsuited to capture and contribute to the management of public welfare organisations (Osborne, 2006). Proponents of NPM have to some extent themselves provoked this critique, since the most radical advocates have questioned the legitimacy of key elements in democratic regulation of public welfare services, arguing that it imposes unreasonable constraints upon the management of public services (Meier, 1997). Conversely, observers who are sceptical against the adoption of NPM-principles have argued that there is a fundamental tension between the professional ethics of welfare professionals and MPM which is blind to these ethics because of its key tenets, i.e. its emphasis on economic efficiency, the maintenance of performance standards, and the promotion of management as an independent activity.

The debates about the benefits and the problems of NPM invoke the paradox of universality, but this time predominantly in terms of the more specific problem of how welfare services can be at one and same time guided by particular professional values and by universal standards. This paradox is further intensified by the emergence of NPM as it attempts to give 'management' the status of an autonomous professional rationality put one the same footing as the other significant professional logics of modern welfare provision: medicine, pedagogy, and psychology. One influential tenet of NPM (and managerialism more broadly) is the demand that 'managers must be given the right to manage', as observed by Pollitt (1993: 3). This is the idea that managers cannot perform effective management unless they are granted reasonable room for manoeuvre. From this follows the assertion that also public sector managers must enjoy the freedom to decide over the use of organisational resources in order to maximise desired performances. But this 'liberated manager' of welfare production constitutes a paradoxical figure: He is envisioned as a 'neutral' promoter of a particular managerial rationality! The paradox is produced by a peculiar rewinding of the classic distinction between management and administration (Clarke & Newman, 1995: 64). The manager was seen as an active decision maker, whereas the administrator merely implemented decisions made elsewhere in an impartial fashion. However, NPM now attributes 'impartial implementation' to the manager's side of the distinction turning it paradoxical. What emerges is the welfare manager 'who needs managerial freedom to implement others' decisions'.

Let us become a bit more specific about this paradoxical welfare manager. One the one hand, he represent a particular managerial rationality which revolves around the goal of achieving increased productivity. Key measures are the setting of performance targets, the instalment of tighter financial control and the creation of more transparency and greater comparability with respect to achievements. On the other hand, the manager is envisioned as a 'neutral' agent who will simply assist welfare organisations in achieving their particular goals which are rooted in particular professional values. Here, the image of the welfare manager is one of an administrative 'relay' or a 'catalyst' who use purportedly neutral technologies of optimization. By this I mean that the figure of the neutral manager entails a view of technologies as tools that may realize or unleash 'latent resources' without influencing or fundamentally shaping the content of welfare services in the process. The paradox of the liberated manager is, in brief, that he figures as at the same time an agent of a new, managerial freedom and as a neutral, administrative relay.

The paradox of the concomitant valuation of the universal and the particular reappears, however, in yet another version under NPM. Here, we start by observing that NPM is often

Paradoxes of Welfare: Universality, Truth, and Power in Modern Welfare Provision 83

involvement' (Anheier & Seibel, 1990) designates strategies for establishing more networklike forms of services arrangements, in which the special qualities of the different agencies involved may 'blend', inspire and challenge tired out certainties of conventional welfare provision. The problem that these new network arrangements create new tensions and challenges in as far as multiple and sometimes incompatible professional logics become interlinked in networks comprising different professional and voluntary agencies has only

The final paradox which is addressed and reformulated by NMP concerns the status of governance relations between central authorities and local welfare institutions. The degree of centralised control and monitoring of local services providers has, of course, been a longstanding issue in debates on public management. Arguments have revolved around the perceived tension between the governmental objective of ensuring equal standards, disciplining costs, and guaranteeing the observance of the national social law, on the one hand, and the need to grant local institutions room for manoeuvre allowing them to adjust services to local needs, invent new practices, and develop particular values. The classic paradox was, then, how central authorities could be at one and the same time a 'top-down' controller and a guarantor of local freedom. NPM offers a kind of a solution to this paradox by creating a space for central government as both maintaining responsibility for the local welfare provision by detailed supervision and performance audit and downplaying responsibility by emphasising that responsibility for concrete services delivery is a local matter. In this way, central government can adopt a double role in relation to welfare provision (Clarke and Newman, 1995: 81). On the one side, it claims to represent public interest by carrying out performance evaluations (or, perhaps rather, asking local services to carry them out), by disseminating information on how to manage, and by authorising particular quality standards and budgetary restraints. On the other side, central government wishes to delegate responsibility, grant organisations 'freedom to manage', and it requests

The trick of de-paradoxification, it has been argued, is to make local welfare organisations accountable to central governments in a more indirect manner (Thygesen & Andersen, 2004). The apparent withdrawal of centralised control of local services purported by NPM seems to be accompanied by a proliferation of new and mundane managerial technologies. These technologies render welfare organisations responsible and accountable to central authorities by making local organisations audit themselves (an audit which may be offered to the local services as a helping tool, the use of which might nevertheless be obligatory). More studies could be done to explore how specific managerial technologies are promulgated as tools to overcome the alleged division lines and paradoxes in public management (some fruitful advancements were made with respect to technologies of accountancy by Peter Miller (and his co-authors), although he did not address the problematic of governance through the concept of paradox (Kurunmäki & Miller, 2006;

An alternative approach for overcoming problems, contradictions and paradoxes in welfare provision which we will mention only briefly is the *Governance approach* (Rhodes, 1996; Kooiman, 2003). Advocates for this approach to reform welfare provision typically oppose themselves against the key tenets of NPM. The point of departure of governance theorists is a decentring of the state, which in their view is traversed by a plethora of competing

begun being studied (Villadsen, 2008b).

'local initiative to accommodate local conditions'.

Miller and Rose, 2009).

promoted as a tool for reforming public services by reference to its capacity to overcome lines of conflicts among employees or irreconcilable orientations towards specific professional values. The basic assumption is that effective achievement of organisational goals depends upon the creation of a 'strong culture' or 'corporate identity' in welfare organisations (Clarke & Newman, 1997: 62-63). Interesting for present purposes is that NPM to some extent was promoted as a tool to overcome the tensions between concomitant attachments and loyalties of welfare professionals. These competing attachments would include attachment to a particular occupational group and its professionalism, attachment to the local, employing organisation, and even attachment to unarticulated notions of 'public service' in general (Clarke & Newman, 62). Strategies to built strong corporate culture and commitment to the mission of the organisation would conceive of such extra-organisational loyalties as problems that needed to be addressed by management.

*The new managerialism placed great stress on giving up of traditional modes of attachment and sought to bridge the motivation gap by combining culture management (the creation of purpose and meanings) with performance management (measuring what really matters). It stresses reduced supervisory control to achieve enhanced integration, moving from compliance to commitment (Clarke & Newman, 62).* 

The interpretation offered by Clarke and Newman has two interesting components. First, it emphasises that the various extra-organisational attachments uphold by welfare professionals should be displaced in a twofold movement: the establishment of organisationally shared values, which should then be monitored more rigorously in terms of levels of performance—'measuring what really matters'. One may thus say that the strategy of deparadoxification is one of promoting the locally adaptable managerialism as universal. Or, putting it slightly different, dissolving those employee-attachments that transcend the specific organisational sites of employment (such as occupational values and collegiality), the new managerialism is universal in terms of its uniform objective of strengthening the local, corporate culture of all welfare organisations.

Second, Clarke and Newman points to another key deparadoxification strategy of NPM which consists in reformulating the division line and hierarchy between managers and employees by means of concepts that signals integration and togetherness: shared values, organisational culture, mutual interests, mutual commitment, and so on. The traditional image of an opposition between managers who instruct, demand, and sanction employees 'from above' is to be replaced by alliances, value consensus, and a shared outlook. To be sure, this strategy of downplaying and reconfiguring opposing interest between managers and their subordinates has for long been a strategic component in the 'soft' HRM and culture management which appeared around the late 1970s and onwards. Karen Legge thus critically observed that concepts of 'mutuality', 'interdependence' and moving 'from compliance to commitment' may serve a strategy of obfuscating fundamentally irreconcilable interests and potential conflicts between employer and employees (Legge, 2005). In the case of reforming welfare provision, NPM there strategy for overriding conflict lines between managers and employees has been one of creating a new distinction between 'core' and 'periphery'. This distinction makes it possible to speak of concentrating on 'core services' and that which can be contracted out, delegated to partners, or even left for revitalised communities and voluntary agencies. The idea of a pluralization of welfare provision by establishing a new kind of 'welfare mix' (Ascoli & Ranci, 2002) or 'third sector

promoted as a tool for reforming public services by reference to its capacity to overcome lines of conflicts among employees or irreconcilable orientations towards specific professional values. The basic assumption is that effective achievement of organisational goals depends upon the creation of a 'strong culture' or 'corporate identity' in welfare organisations (Clarke & Newman, 1997: 62-63). Interesting for present purposes is that NPM to some extent was promoted as a tool to overcome the tensions between concomitant attachments and loyalties of welfare professionals. These competing attachments would include attachment to a particular occupational group and its professionalism, attachment to the local, employing organisation, and even attachment to unarticulated notions of 'public service' in general (Clarke & Newman, 62). Strategies to built strong corporate culture and commitment to the mission of the organisation would conceive of such extra-organisational

*The new managerialism placed great stress on giving up of traditional modes of attachment and sought to bridge the motivation gap by combining culture management (the creation of purpose and meanings) with performance management (measuring what really matters). It stresses reduced supervisory control to achieve enhanced integration, moving from compliance to* 

The interpretation offered by Clarke and Newman has two interesting components. First, it emphasises that the various extra-organisational attachments uphold by welfare professionals should be displaced in a twofold movement: the establishment of organisationally shared values, which should then be monitored more rigorously in terms of levels of performance—'measuring what really matters'. One may thus say that the strategy of deparadoxification is one of promoting the locally adaptable managerialism as universal. Or, putting it slightly different, dissolving those employee-attachments that transcend the specific organisational sites of employment (such as occupational values and collegiality), the new managerialism is universal in terms of its uniform objective of strengthening the

Second, Clarke and Newman points to another key deparadoxification strategy of NPM which consists in reformulating the division line and hierarchy between managers and employees by means of concepts that signals integration and togetherness: shared values, organisational culture, mutual interests, mutual commitment, and so on. The traditional image of an opposition between managers who instruct, demand, and sanction employees 'from above' is to be replaced by alliances, value consensus, and a shared outlook. To be sure, this strategy of downplaying and reconfiguring opposing interest between managers and their subordinates has for long been a strategic component in the 'soft' HRM and culture management which appeared around the late 1970s and onwards. Karen Legge thus critically observed that concepts of 'mutuality', 'interdependence' and moving 'from compliance to commitment' may serve a strategy of obfuscating fundamentally irreconcilable interests and potential conflicts between employer and employees (Legge, 2005). In the case of reforming welfare provision, NPM there strategy for overriding conflict lines between managers and employees has been one of creating a new distinction between 'core' and 'periphery'. This distinction makes it possible to speak of concentrating on 'core services' and that which can be contracted out, delegated to partners, or even left for revitalised communities and voluntary agencies. The idea of a pluralization of welfare provision by establishing a new kind of 'welfare mix' (Ascoli & Ranci, 2002) or 'third sector

loyalties as problems that needed to be addressed by management.

*commitment (Clarke & Newman, 62).* 

local, corporate culture of all welfare organisations.

involvement' (Anheier & Seibel, 1990) designates strategies for establishing more networklike forms of services arrangements, in which the special qualities of the different agencies involved may 'blend', inspire and challenge tired out certainties of conventional welfare provision. The problem that these new network arrangements create new tensions and challenges in as far as multiple and sometimes incompatible professional logics become interlinked in networks comprising different professional and voluntary agencies has only begun being studied (Villadsen, 2008b).

The final paradox which is addressed and reformulated by NMP concerns the status of governance relations between central authorities and local welfare institutions. The degree of centralised control and monitoring of local services providers has, of course, been a longstanding issue in debates on public management. Arguments have revolved around the perceived tension between the governmental objective of ensuring equal standards, disciplining costs, and guaranteeing the observance of the national social law, on the one hand, and the need to grant local institutions room for manoeuvre allowing them to adjust services to local needs, invent new practices, and develop particular values. The classic paradox was, then, how central authorities could be at one and the same time a 'top-down' controller and a guarantor of local freedom. NPM offers a kind of a solution to this paradox by creating a space for central government as both maintaining responsibility for the local welfare provision by detailed supervision and performance audit and downplaying responsibility by emphasising that responsibility for concrete services delivery is a local matter. In this way, central government can adopt a double role in relation to welfare provision (Clarke and Newman, 1995: 81). On the one side, it claims to represent public interest by carrying out performance evaluations (or, perhaps rather, asking local services to carry them out), by disseminating information on how to manage, and by authorising particular quality standards and budgetary restraints. On the other side, central government wishes to delegate responsibility, grant organisations 'freedom to manage', and it requests 'local initiative to accommodate local conditions'.

The trick of de-paradoxification, it has been argued, is to make local welfare organisations accountable to central governments in a more indirect manner (Thygesen & Andersen, 2004). The apparent withdrawal of centralised control of local services purported by NPM seems to be accompanied by a proliferation of new and mundane managerial technologies. These technologies render welfare organisations responsible and accountable to central authorities by making local organisations audit themselves (an audit which may be offered to the local services as a helping tool, the use of which might nevertheless be obligatory). More studies could be done to explore how specific managerial technologies are promulgated as tools to overcome the alleged division lines and paradoxes in public management (some fruitful advancements were made with respect to technologies of accountancy by Peter Miller (and his co-authors), although he did not address the problematic of governance through the concept of paradox (Kurunmäki & Miller, 2006; Miller and Rose, 2009).

An alternative approach for overcoming problems, contradictions and paradoxes in welfare provision which we will mention only briefly is the *Governance approach* (Rhodes, 1996; Kooiman, 2003). Advocates for this approach to reform welfare provision typically oppose themselves against the key tenets of NPM. The point of departure of governance theorists is a decentring of the state, which in their view is traversed by a plethora of competing

Paradoxes of Welfare: Universality, Truth, and Power in Modern Welfare Provision 85

It was further argued that the major reform initiatives for re-invigorating welfare services, NPM and governance theory, do not addresses governmental paradoxes in a satisfactory manner. Whether the approach to welfare paradoxes is one of more user-involvement in the definition of services or one of the employment technical tools for carrying out managerial strategies, paradoxes are thought of as something to be done away with. It is thus telling that what I have termed governmental paradoxes would normally be described as 'dilemmas', 'tough choices', 'contradictions', 'ambiguous normative pressures' etc. The two dominant approaches within public management research do not conceive of paradoxes as a fundamental condition of management. Despite the many differences in their views of welfare management, they both adhere to a problem-and-solution scheme that understands

However, in the approach adopted here borrowing upon the governmentality-framework and some basic suggestions for the study of paradoxes in Luhmann, paradoxes are not dissolvable. They are logical impossibilities which will continue to exist and manifest themselves as long as there is such a thing as modern welfare provision. Further studies are needed to understand processes of de-paradoxification which can similarly be expected to be a persisting activity that takes many shapes across different avenues of welfare provision. I suggest that we be ready to acknowledge that de-paradoxification work may be certainly be burdensome in some instances, but that it might produce new possibilities and feed positively into welfare services in others. One positive effect of de-paradoxification could for instance consist in the reformulation of lines of confrontations between groups or contradictions between values which appear as fixed and 'stifled'. This is what I take to be implied in the suggestion to 'unleash the paradoxes' in public management (Majgaard, 2009). This view also has implications for practitioners. It means that we should not aim to dissolve the paradoxes or 'take sides' with respect to their irreconcilable demands; we should rather understand how paradoxes, as well as being problematic, are also always productive, in as far as they generate debate, provoke contestations of existing arrangements,

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**8. References** 

interests, pressure groups and networks of public, private and voluntary organisations. They describe (some of them commemoratively) how reforms of welfare states from the 1980s onwards have effected a shift from government through hierarchic bureaucracy to a network-based governance that involves market agents, quase-markets and voluntary agencies in the delivery of public services. From this observation, Governance scholars posits a greater complexity and fragmentation of state power, where central authorities increasingly depend upon other, non-state actors to implement policies and secure the delivery of what is still considered public services (Bevir, 2010: 436)

In terms of welfare provision, a key problem for these scholars is how to establish democratic bottom-up processes in which citizens and user groups participate in the definition of welfare services, particularly through different types of user boards. That paradoxes and contradictions in welfare services may be dissolved if services are turned more responsive to citizens' views is a general assumption for governance scholars. This assumption seems to rest on a conception of clients and users as rational agents who are self-conscious of their individual interests and preferences. In this way, the governance approach typically relocates both causes and solutions to paradoxes of welfare *outside* the institutions or in 'governance networks'. Establishing user-involvement in welfare services demands, however, that the users get a voice; that they views are somehow represented and channelled into welfare institutions. In this context, a new paradox emerge in the shape of a social services user who are at one and the same time in need of guidance from welfare professionals and a self-transparent knower of his own interests and needs. For this reason, perhaps, governance scholars pay particular attention to studying and discussing how the 'voice' of the services user can be heard devoid of external powers and other people's influences. Their general approach is that conflicts of interests are to be resolved by local and perhaps innovative forms of consensus-making in which solutions to particular problems are produced, as far as possible by the effected individuals themselves. In this context, I shall merely mention one key shortcoming of this framework for reforming welfare services and institutions. Focussing predominantly on user involvement, interorganisational networks, and consensus making processes the governance approach leaves little room for recognising paradoxes as an *inherent property* of welfare services.

#### **7. Conclusion**

This chapter has attempted to demonstrate the analytical force of applying a governmentality perspective supplemented with Luhmann's concept of paradox to the understanding of modern welfare provision. In particular, the analytical framework is well-suited to explore the inherent paradoxes of regulating welfare services, which we designated 'governmental paradoxes'. These paradoxes are to be found both at the level of professionals' interactions with citizens, at the level of management of welfare organisations, and on the level the governance relations between central authorities and local services units. In welfare provision, the paradoxes of universality, truth, and power were suggested as pervasive and enduring challenges to be tackled by professionals and programs for the organisation of services arrangements. A greater attention to these paradoxes as conditioning the spaces of action in welfare provision would, it is suggested, generate a better sense of what is at stake in current controversies and on-going developments.

It was further argued that the major reform initiatives for re-invigorating welfare services, NPM and governance theory, do not addresses governmental paradoxes in a satisfactory manner. Whether the approach to welfare paradoxes is one of more user-involvement in the definition of services or one of the employment technical tools for carrying out managerial strategies, paradoxes are thought of as something to be done away with. It is thus telling that what I have termed governmental paradoxes would normally be described as 'dilemmas', 'tough choices', 'contradictions', 'ambiguous normative pressures' etc. The two dominant approaches within public management research do not conceive of paradoxes as a fundamental condition of management. Despite the many differences in their views of welfare management, they both adhere to a problem-and-solution scheme that understands the paradox as a temporary obstacle and something which can be surmounted.

However, in the approach adopted here borrowing upon the governmentality-framework and some basic suggestions for the study of paradoxes in Luhmann, paradoxes are not dissolvable. They are logical impossibilities which will continue to exist and manifest themselves as long as there is such a thing as modern welfare provision. Further studies are needed to understand processes of de-paradoxification which can similarly be expected to be a persisting activity that takes many shapes across different avenues of welfare provision. I suggest that we be ready to acknowledge that de-paradoxification work may be certainly be burdensome in some instances, but that it might produce new possibilities and feed positively into welfare services in others. One positive effect of de-paradoxification could for instance consist in the reformulation of lines of confrontations between groups or contradictions between values which appear as fixed and 'stifled'. This is what I take to be implied in the suggestion to 'unleash the paradoxes' in public management (Majgaard, 2009). This view also has implications for practitioners. It means that we should not aim to dissolve the paradoxes or 'take sides' with respect to their irreconcilable demands; we should rather understand how paradoxes, as well as being problematic, are also always productive, in as far as they generate debate, provoke contestations of existing arrangements, and call for new solutions.

#### **8. References**

84 Social Welfare

interests, pressure groups and networks of public, private and voluntary organisations. They describe (some of them commemoratively) how reforms of welfare states from the 1980s onwards have effected a shift from government through hierarchic bureaucracy to a network-based governance that involves market agents, quase-markets and voluntary agencies in the delivery of public services. From this observation, Governance scholars posits a greater complexity and fragmentation of state power, where central authorities increasingly depend upon other, non-state actors to implement policies and secure the

In terms of welfare provision, a key problem for these scholars is how to establish democratic bottom-up processes in which citizens and user groups participate in the definition of welfare services, particularly through different types of user boards. That paradoxes and contradictions in welfare services may be dissolved if services are turned more responsive to citizens' views is a general assumption for governance scholars. This assumption seems to rest on a conception of clients and users as rational agents who are self-conscious of their individual interests and preferences. In this way, the governance approach typically relocates both causes and solutions to paradoxes of welfare *outside* the institutions or in 'governance networks'. Establishing user-involvement in welfare services demands, however, that the users get a voice; that they views are somehow represented and channelled into welfare institutions. In this context, a new paradox emerge in the shape of a social services user who are at one and the same time in need of guidance from welfare professionals and a self-transparent knower of his own interests and needs. For this reason, perhaps, governance scholars pay particular attention to studying and discussing how the 'voice' of the services user can be heard devoid of external powers and other people's influences. Their general approach is that conflicts of interests are to be resolved by local and perhaps innovative forms of consensus-making in which solutions to particular problems are produced, as far as possible by the effected individuals themselves. In this context, I shall merely mention one key shortcoming of this framework for reforming welfare services and institutions. Focussing predominantly on user involvement, interorganisational networks, and consensus making processes the governance approach leaves

delivery of what is still considered public services (Bevir, 2010: 436)

little room for recognising paradoxes as an *inherent property* of welfare services.

This chapter has attempted to demonstrate the analytical force of applying a governmentality perspective supplemented with Luhmann's concept of paradox to the understanding of modern welfare provision. In particular, the analytical framework is well-suited to explore the inherent paradoxes of regulating welfare services, which we designated 'governmental paradoxes'. These paradoxes are to be found both at the level of professionals' interactions with citizens, at the level of management of welfare organisations, and on the level the governance relations between central authorities and local services units. In welfare provision, the paradoxes of universality, truth, and power were suggested as pervasive and enduring challenges to be tackled by professionals and programs for the organisation of services arrangements. A greater attention to these paradoxes as conditioning the spaces of action in welfare provision would, it is suggested, generate a better sense of what is at stake in current

**7. Conclusion** 

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**4** 

*Ireland* 

Brendan O'Keeffe

**Area-Based Partnerships and Social Welfare:** 

Partnership is one of the most repeatedly used terms and concepts in public policy. Yet its meanings and interpretations vary, and despite its apparent popularity, some policy-makers and agencies are inclined to be fearful of the whole notion of partnership. What began as a proposal for a more effective way of supporting subsidiarity in decision-making about three decades ago, has now developed into sets of institutional arrangements and frameworks, whereby government, the social partners and the community and voluntary sector come together to address issues of mutual and common concern. This chapter looks at the growing importance of partnership and endogenous approaches to aspects of social welfare. It notes how partnerships have piloted new methods of social welfare provision and service delivery, based on local flexibilities and tailored responses to client needs and potential. Over time, many pilot approaches have become mainstreamed, and lessons from the local have come to impact on and influence the national. Other partnership initiatives have however faltered and waned, mainly due to the inabilities of agencies to make the transition from traditional and hierarchical government to multi-lateral and flexible governance processes and arrangements. Across Europe, partnership governance is most imbedded in institutions at the regional and sub-regional tiers, and Area-Based Partnership organisations tend to provide social welfare services as part of a suite of local development actions that include training and up-skilling local populations, supporting new enterprise development and animating the community and voluntary sector. Thus, social welfare has become

In several European states, a shift towards endogenous approaches to social service and welfare provision in tandem with local development interventions has yielded considerable successes in promoting social inclusion and reducing levels of dependency. Italy has a long tradition in endogenous development, which was brought into sharp focus with the economic crisis of the 1970s. A concentration on diversifying local economies based on optimising endogenous resources has enabled Emilia-Romagna to become one of the most developed regions in Europe with consistently low levels of unemployment (Mazzonis, 1997; Noya, 2009). Producer co-operatives and social enterprises in Spain provide job opportunities for persons unable to access mainstream commercial employment. These grassroots activities also provide essential local services and ensure that produced capital is retained locally. Furthermore, co-operative banks such as *Mondragón* have enabled people to

integrated into broader territorial development strategies.

**1. Introduction** 

**Innovations and Challenges** 

*Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick,* 

