Double activation: workfare meets marketisation

Since the financial crisis, Ireland’s welfare state has been reorientated around
a regulatory, ‘work-first’ activation model. Claimants now face penalty rates
for non-compliance with activation requirements that have been significantly
extended since 2009. Alongside these formal policy reforms, the organisations
delivering Public Employment Services, and the modes by which they are
commissioned, have also been reconfigured through a series of New Public
Management style governance reforms, including, most notably, the creation
of a quasi-market for employment services (JobPath) in 2015. This article
addresses the intersection between activation and quasi-marketisation,
positioning the latter as a form of ‘double activation’ that reshapes not only
how but also what policies are enacted at the street level. It unpacks their
shared logics and mutual commitment to governing agents at a distance
through a behavioural public policy orientation, and reflects on the extent to
which marketisation is capable of producing lower-cost but more responsive
employment services.