Co-planning and co-design as progress in the implementation of welfare services

Abstract

Abstract Co-planning (and co-design) of welfare services between public administrations and civic organisations is an innovative approach aiming to enact and maximise aggregate effort and competence contributions among complementary actors in the direction of participation and active citizenship. In our paper we develop a simple theoretical framework trying to illustrate how it is possible to pursue the first best of an optimal participated planning, design and management approach for welfare services. We examine pros and cons of different solutions reconciling involvement of civil actors and respect of antitrust principles outlining four benchmark models with different characteristics in terms of upstream and downstream participation levels. We outline policy proposals to solve dilemmas related to the difficulty of jointly activating participation, intrinsic and monetary incentives avoiding in the meanwhile collusion and corruption. JEL numbers: I38, I30.