Austerity measures in local welfare provision: Is there a trade-off between long-term and short-term orientation in German municipalities? The case of youth welfare

Severe fiscal constraints or even budgetary crises form the background for local social policy reform in many German municipalities since the early 2000s by the latest. According to a widespread thesis, reforms lead to a retreat of local government from voluntary action in the field of social prevention and to a concentration on the obligatory functions of municipalities in terms of social assistance to vulnerable groups. The paper deals with two questions: First, in how far can we really observe a trade-off between voluntary and obligatory social policy functions in German municipalities since the beginning of the 2000s? Second, what explains deviation from this “austerity thesis” and variation in the scope of local social policy? To answer these questions the paper focusses on the field of child and youth policy. This is not only a core field of German local social policy characterized by a plurality of both obligatory social assistance-related as well as voluntary social prevention-related functions. Moreover, in the field of child and youth policy, local government is a key player (as compared to regional and state level actors) as the problems dealt with herein are predominantly local. So, the field used to be a source of local policy innovation probably challenged today by the impact of budgetary constraints. The paper would fit best into panel 1 (the way municipalities dealt with recent challenges). We present empirical evidence against the mentioned trade-off thesis regarding local social policy in general and child and youth policy in particular. A direct relationship between socio-economic factors like local fiscal crises on the one side and the investment as well as engagement of municipalities in innovative prevention-oriented policies and policy-tools on the other side cannot be established. We argue that the investment and engagement in child and youth policy and in innovative voluntary policy functions depends on the strategic goals of core local actors (mayors, treasurers), the relationship between them and the local social politicians, and the extent to which social and particularly child and youth political action is recognized as a strategic resource of local government. Methodologically we combine quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis. In order to analyse local government spending on social policy in general and on obligatory as well as voluntary functions of local child and youth policy in particular we use local data of the German Youth-Welfare Statistics. Furthermore, we present the results of four local case studies on child and youth policy under fiscal constraint.