Technologies of government in network promotion. The case of child protection in contemporary Germany

Within the infrastructure of contemporary welfare administration, collaboration across organisational and professional boundaries is far and wide considered as being deficient; at the same time, major experts refer to networks... [ view full abstract ]

Within the infrastructure of contemporary welfare administration, collaboration across organisational and professional boundaries is far and wide considered as being deficient; at the same time, major experts refer to networks as a silver bullet for overcoming the fragmentation of public service provision. In this vein, regulation has oftentimes promoted formalized collaborative endeavor – although network theories imply that ‘true’ collaboration is predicated on non-formalized, that is, creative and impulsive, collective action. This paper explores this movement by portraying developments in the German child protection sector with an eye on technologies of government and related theoretical concepts such as governmentality, neo-bureaucracy, and political symbolism. Given the complex nature of the sector’s agenda – discovering and sheltering endangered children as well as organizing ‘curative’ interventions in their life worlds (families) – inter-agency collaboration is often viewed as imperative in this sector. Its architecture proves particularly multifaceted in Germany’s mixed economy of welfare, notwithstanding that local hub agencies are responsible for steering interventions. Findings from interview-based case studies conducted in five regional settings with a focus on collaborative dynamics across organizational boundaries suggest that regulatory enforcement, connecting with both symbolic policies and neo-bureaucratic ‘coopetition’, makes relevant actors adopt an instrumental behaviour through which networking only proceeds 'on paper'. At the same time, stakeholders engage in informal collaboration driven by pragmatic local concerns. Eventually, official initiatives meant to foster networking end up being thwarted while collaborative innovation can only thrive under the surface. The lesson in terms of theory is that, concerning publicly-regulated human service provision, contemporary public management is fraught with a paradox between increasing attempts to ‘govern’ collaboration and ‘true’ network activities being forced to underground at many instances.