How providers make policy: an analysis of everyday conversation in a welfare office

Abstract

Recent analyses of public policy have focused on the bureaucratic encounter as a location for the co-production of policy by providers and recipients of various forms of public assistance. In this article I examine a different kind of co-production, namely that which occurs among welfare providers in their everyday conversations with each other. Drawing on a 17-month ethnographic study of recipients and providers of welfare (Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and food stamps) in the USA, I explore providers' co-productive activities in a context in which strict official lines are drawn between policy formation and implementation. This division of labour, which characterizes providers' place in the welfare bureaucracy, creates an environment conducive to control-orientated rather than service-orientated provision, effectively precluding the establishment of a positive co-productive relationship between providers and recipients. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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