Organization Matters. Contracting for Service Provision and Civicness

The main question that this chapter will deal with regards the influences that different ways of organizing social and health-care services may have on civicness, understood as a quality of the relationships between citizens and institutions. I develop my analysis in the framework of the “new” social policies in Italy. The main results of the comparison of two Regional welfare regimes are synthesized, to frame the more specific comparison between two corresponding service provision systems. The focus on policy instruments in action and on their “organizational effects” in policy arenas, gives several relevant insights on the organizational shapes of service relationships and on the values and norms these shapes nurture. I analyze two different yet comparable policy instruments and compare the service relationships that take shape through their use. The analytical material that the research has produced on these instruments in action gives many indications on the civic qualities of relationships between services and recipients and on the organizational conditions in which these qualities are played out