A Broader Perspective on Local Policies and the European Social Fund

Chapter 8 departs from the empirical findings presented in chapter 6 and 7 and develops an empirically-grounded typology of local responses to the European Social Fund in the field of social and employment policies. The three major empirical patterns of how local policy fields deal with the ESF and under which conditions they do so, are discussed in turn. The first type refers to the so-called ‘refuseniks’; cases where local social and employment actors experienced the ESF more as a burden than as a welcome financial gift. In the second type, it was observable that actors with clear and pre-defined own ideas used the ESF-funding to finance these ideas. Such ‘cream skimmer’ cases did not experience significant change of their local policy fields through the ESF. In the third type (the ‘transformers’), this was clearly different: here, local social and employment policies were strongly shaped by the ESF. Chapter 8 discusses to what extent these types can be (contingently) generalised to other cases in Europe and beyond, and what the implications of the findings are for theoretical debates in the field of Europeanisation.