The Power of Citizens and Professionals in Welfare Encounters: The Influence of Bureaucracy, Market and Psychology (Mik-Meyer Nanna)(Paperback)

This book addresses the crucial issue of the interrelation between macro and micro structures within citizen-professional encounters of the modern welfare state. Since the 1990s, European welfare states have moved towards a so-called governance approach; a bottom-up approach that emphasises the activeness, engagement, co-production, and cooperation of citizens. This framing of the encounter means that citizens are no longer best described as the passive clients of the bureaucracy, and welfare workers are no longer automatically the powerful party of the encounter. However, the welfare encounter is structured by other factors as well; factors such as market values and bureaucratic principles which often pull in different directions than the governance approach to citizens. Nevertheless, most current research is inspired by either a Weberian approach (highlighting bureaucratic
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