Round-trip reforms in the horizontal governance of welfare: the case of public-private collaboration in labor intermediation in the Valencian Region

The ideas of the New Public Management and the emulation of European policies have extended public-private collaboration as a horizontal governance instrument in the provision of welfare. However, the search for greater participation of the private sector in the management of certain public services presents difficulties. A clear case is the reform of labor intermediation carried out in Spain since 2013, whose final scope has been very limited due to factors such as the crisis, the multilevel government context and the ideology of governments. This article analyzes the specific case of the Valencia Region to try to understand the difficulties of reform of this public program and contribute to the literature with new empirical evidence on the importance of the factors cited in the degree of success of the reforms that seek to increase public-private collaboration in the sector of social policies.