Parallelle innovatie als een vorm van beleidsleren: het voorbeeld van de keten van werk en inkomen

After decades of deliberation, the institutional fields of social security and active labour market policies in the Netherlands have been brought under one umbrella structure at the start of the 21st. century. We discuss the current approach of labour market reintegration both at national and local level, where organisational and policy learning is now an official ambition. Our argument starts from the perspective of policy feedback and reiterative policy development in experimental settings. Our case study is the pilot project of job reintegration, the so-called ‘Toonkamer-experimenten’. We discuss the conditions of these experiments, which were placed in a low-regulative environment, where professionals were challenged to invent new and more effective (in terms off reintegrating job seekers) working methods. Subsequently, we evaluate the relationship between vertical steering (planning and control) and horizontal adjustment (between the employment centres CWI, social security bodies UWV, and the municipal authorities) within the chain of work and income in terms of policy learning. The combination of learning and change at local and national level is what we subscribe as parallel innovation.