Missing in Action: Bridging Capital and Cross-Boundary Discourse

The regulatory welfare state illuminates path dependencies and tendencies to mutual growth in markets, welfare, and regulation. This article uses two specific welfare-to-work programs, one in Korea and one in Australia, to illustrate the institutional interconnections that are in play within the regulatory welfare state. Governance of these programs is hampered by lack of discursive capacity to identify where problems exist and how they can be fixed. When faced with new programs, implementers look to higher authorities to make sense of and to solve the problems on the ground, but authorities are blinded by old institutional categories that pit market mentalities against welfare mentalities with regulation as an ideological tool, rather than an integral part of solutions. Transparency and cross-boundary listening are necessary to create the bridging capital to make these programs work and reconnect democratically elected governments with their citizens.