Vernetzung als regierungstechnologisches Rettungsprogramm?

Abstract

Abstract Within the infrastructure of the modern welfare state, networking and collaboration across organizational and professional boundaries are far and wide considered as being deficient. At the same time, many experts refer to them as a silver bullet for overcoming institutional fragmentation and recent movements towards exacerbated social disintegration, even as governments tend to enforce collaboration formally. Using the example of child protection in Germany, this article draws on a mix of theories of government technologies in order to elucidate reasons for problems with actual collaborative arrangements in the social welfare sector, suggesting that, due to certain bottom-up dynamics, enforced networking in this sector is unlikely to be achieved by the policies under study. The analysis is based on evidence from case studies in five local settings, illustrating how major professional groups and organizations are dealing with evolving regulation and related challenges.