oa Arbeidsmarktbeleid: De arbeidsmarktpolitiek van gemeenten

The labour market politics of municipalities

The new Work and Social Assistance Act incites municipalities to execute social assistance more efficiently. This article discusses the implications of this new system of financing for the labour market politics of municipalities. Budgeting financial means of social assistance and reintegration offers a solution to agency problems involved with the realization of these policies. However, this creates a larger problem in the sense that municipalities are confronted with a policy issue to which they have no simple solution: influencing regional (un)employment. This article addresses ways in which municipalities may cope with this dilemma and the emphases they have thus far placed on various related issues. At the moment an internal orientation, concern with work processes, seems to overshadow an external orientation, concerned with the regional labour market.