Local worlds of coordinated activation policy

In Chapter 11 on local worlds of coordinated activation in Europe, Katharina Zimmermann, Vanesa Fuertes and Patrizia Aurich-Beerheide shed light on the role of the local level as a generic actor in the organization of activation. The authors apply a standardized fuzzy-set analysis to implementation patterns in all 18 local entities studied for the research underlying this book, focusing on the local coordination of policy areas, administrative levels and stakeholders relevant for activation. Zimmermann, Fuertes and Aurich-Beerheide find no explicitly local patterns of implementation in the area of activation policies that transcend the boundaries of nation states. However and instead, they find three country clusters that do not correspond with established welfare state or activation regime typologies: ‘coherent coordination’, ‘partial coordination’ and ‘stakeholder coordination’. This seems a highly interesting starting point for more research on the mechanisms shaping the coordination and implementation of activation in different policy and governance contexts.