Cash Transfers and Guaranteed Minimum Income Programs:
Research, Evaluation, and Policy
Prague, Czech Republic
September 9-10, 2024
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“Improving Coordination between Benefit Administration and Services”
Agota Scharle, Budapest Institute for Policy Analysis
Improving Coordination between Benefit Administration and Services
Recent economic and demographic trends have increased the diversity of benefit recipients (Schmid 2017, Schmid 2020). While economic and demographic changes may have evolved at a different pace across European countries, the nature of these new risks and the rising share of new risk groups in the population has been commonly observed. These challenges require policy adjustment in minimum income systems regarding entitlement rules, levels, behavioural conditions, and also in the cooperation between public agencies administering benefits and those providing public services (Clasen & Clegg, 2011).
Aim: This paper focuses on reforms to improve coordination between benefit administration and services. It contributes to explaining what hinders or supports such reforms to be initiated and to bear fruit.
Data: Data come from detailed country case studies (12 cases) and earlier research (5 cases). The database for the analysis contains: 18 variables to describe institutions and the political and economic context of the reform; 11 variables to describe the design of the intervention; 7 variables describing the implementation process; and 3 for outcomes.
Method: The analysis applies Mill’s method of difference to identify factors that explain success or failure in some stage of the reform, distinguising two main stages (design vs implementation). The explanatory factors and their potential impact on reform outcomes were derived from existing theories, and their respective importance is identified in a framework of (Boolean/crisp-set) qualitative comparative analysis.
Results: In the best-fitting model for the first stage (design), we identify eight possible paths. In the most common path, the government endorsed the aims underlying service integration; the potential for political disunity was overridden by cross-party consensus over the need for reform; the initial setup of services was fragmented, but the scope of the reform was limited; and the government was efficient. By contrast, despite a consensual political culture, lack of a cross-party consensus on the direction of the integration reform, may lead to failure. Fragmentation of the initial institutional setup of employment and/or social services can hamper successful design if the goal of the reform is overly ambitious. Lastly, the outcome of the first stage depends on the quality of governance, mitigated by the involvement of international organisations.
In the second stage (implementation), the most common path involved low time pressure, decentralised government compensated by a strong tradition of local cooperation, a fragmented initial setup compensated by local expertise, and efforts to monitor and evaluate the reform. The initial setup and local capacities are important drivers of the outcome in all cases. A fragmented institutional setup may be overcome by local expertise, a strong tradition of cooperation at the local level and consultation with stakeholders during the design phase. Allowing sufficient time for implementation is important, but time pressure does not necessarily lead to failure if local expertise is available and/or political commitment to achieve results is high. Poor monitoring tends to lead to failure or limited results. The paper is an update of a research report (chap. 4 of “Study on integrated delivery of social services) for the European Commission.