Welfare Reform And ‘wicked Issues’ - From Coupling To De-coupling? (Working Paper 5)

Abstract This paper seeks to identify trans-boundary innovative coordination practices and related modes of specialization and steering instruments in welfare administration reforms. We describe how the 2005 reform of the welfare administration in Norway started as a coupling process involving merger and partnership, but later, following the 2008 reorganization, introduced re-centralization and re-specialization, which implied decoupling. The main research questions are how we can explain this change from coupling to de-coupling of administrative reform and policy delivery? What are the main actors and interests behind it? What are the changes in organizing principles experienced? Why was the administrative reform not sustainable and reorganization through decoupling seen as a better answer to the «wicked issues» of welfare services? To answer these questions we apply a transformative theoretical approach, which combines a structural-instrumental perspective, a cultural-institutional perspective and an environmental perspective.