Although diverse European welfare states have institutionalized an extensive infrastructure of public welfare services to redistribute resources, governments have been confronted with barriers in realizing the social rights of certain groups of citizens. Decentralization and increasingly local welfare provision has been promoted as a strategy to substantially realize social rights. In that sense, the vital role of frontline social work has been stressed in local welfare systems, being considered as dynamic arrangements in which local policymakers and professional social work actors are involved in the substantial realization of social rights. These trends have been frequently studied from a social policy perspective, but the role of professional social work on the frontline level has received much less attention. In this study, we accordingly rely on neo‐institutional theory to explore how frontline social workers employ their professional discretion during processes of local social policy implementation, related to the broader circumstances in which they operate. Our qualitative study aims to tease out whether their strategic actions might transform and/or change the rules of the local institutional game. The qualitative analysis is based on policy documents and qualitative interviews with key actors in two municipalities in Belgium. Our research findings reveal three central fields of tension: (1) Rescaling of responsibilities to the local welfare system and community level versus in‐built spatial concentrations of social problems and inequalities, (2) Efficient local welfare system organization versus wicked social problems, and (3) Fast local welfare system logics versus slow realities.

中文翻译：

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重新审视社会工作在地方福利体系社会权利的实质性实现中的作用：转变和改变制度游戏规则？

尽管不同的欧洲福利国家已经将广泛的公共福利服务基础设施制度化以重新分配资源，但各国政府在实现某些公民群体的社会权利方面仍面临障碍。权力下放和日益地方化的福利供给已被作为切实实现社会权利的战略而得到推广。从这个意义上说，一线社会工作的重要作用在地方福利体系中得到了强调，被视为地方政策制定者和专业社会工作参与者参与社会权利的实质性实现的动态安排。这些趋势经常从社会政策的角度进行研究，但专业社会工作在一线的作用却很少受到关注。因此，在本研究中，我们依靠新制度理论来探讨一线社会工作者在当地社会政策实施过程中如何运用其专业裁量权，并与他们所处的更广泛的环境相关。我们的定性研究旨在弄清楚他们的战略行动是否可能改变和/或改变当地机构的游戏规则。定性分析基于政策文件和对比利时两个城市主要参与者的定性访谈。我们的研究结果揭示了三个核心领域的紧张关系：(1) 地方福利体系和社区层面责任的重新调整与社会问题和不平等的内在空间集中，(2) 高效的地方福利体系组织与邪恶的社会问题，以及(3) 快速的地方福利制度逻辑与缓慢的现实。