**Part 2**

**Social Welfare: Paradoxes and Innovations** 

60 Social Welfare

Willner, Johann (2003), " Public Ownership and Privatisation in Finland", CESifo

Wortzel, H. and L. Wortzel (1989), "Privatization: Not the only Answer", *World Development*,

Privatisation Experiences in the EU, Munich, Germany, pp. 1-26.

pp. 633-641.

**3** 

**Paradoxes of Welfare:** 

Kaspar Villadsen

*Denmark* 

*Copenhagen Business School,* 

**Universality, Truth, and Power** 

This Chapter explores paradoxes in modern welfare provision. In so doing, it both engages with theoretical expositions of the contradictions within modern forms of governing and by presenting three specific case studies on paradoxical welfare. The chapter draws in particular upon insights from Michel Foucault and governmentality writers, and empirically it uses studies from Denmark done by the author and one done by a fellow researcher. First the chapter presents the view on governmentality as it was developed by Foucault and writers who draw on his framework for understanding modern power. This section especially highlights the paradoxes inherent in modern ways of governing, and it discusses how these paradoxes re-emerge and give shape to modern welfare provision. Next, the chapter explores three cases of concrete welfare provision with a focus on its inherent paradoxes. The first case is on the preparatory training of unemployed people, the second concerns anti-authoritarian dialogue techniques used in motivational therapy, and the third examines health promotion by means of 'playful' techniques purporting to influence individuals' identity-work. Finally, a brief discussion is offered on how paradoxes may be handled not only analytically but also by practitioners. The point of departure of the chapter is that paradoxes constitute a persisting and integral property of modern welfare provision. This means that we may hardly hope to suspend or resolve them once and for all, but

In the tradition of critical analyses of power offered by Foucault and his interlocutors, particular attention is paid to paradoxes inherent in modern exercises of power. As an immediate marker, we may say that the perspective examines the problem of 'governing freedom'. More precisely this problem concerns how in modern societies authorities may govern formally free individuals, and at the level of politics, how state authorities may regulate when confronted by a civil society characterised by a fundamental capacity of selfregulation. These broad, diagnostic observations rely upon the approach to liberalism taken by Foucault and more recent 'governmentality studies' (Barry et al., Rose 1993; Dean 1999). Liberal government, on this view, has an internal self-problematizing impetus which makes

should rather look for ways of rendering them productive.

**2. Governmentality: A prism for observing paradoxes** 

**1. Introduction** 

**in Modern Welfare Provision** 
