ABSTRACT
How does society remember and use memory to better tackle public problems? How do public authorities work with civil society to allow policy experiments and scale them? The anti-poverty movement organization ATD-Quart Monde came up with an innovative solution to solve the long-term unemployment problem of the 85 persons who’d been out of work for over a year in a small French town, Seiches-sur-le-Loir. They suggested to the town Mayor to match the qualifications and skills of these unemployed persons to the full-time jobs in the town. The ATD-Quart Monde established a novel company structure that would recruit and pay the unemployed person while receiving social benefits from the government. This way the unemployed persons would temporarily work for the city and be trained, rather than being compensated to stay at home. This initiative had positive outcomes that led to changes in national legislation and the allocation of funds for an experimental phase. The experiment was launched as “zero long-term unemployment in French territories” with ten medium-sized municipalities involved. The success of the experiment made it possible to extend the movement throughout the whole country, to 200 projects, and inspired Belgium to experiment with the same policy. This case demonstrates the importance of public institutions’ support to develop policy innovations and bring them to scale as well as the importance of new governance models better suited to fostering innovation.
