The Political Economy of Active Labor-Market Policy:
TL;DR: In this paper, a typology of four types of active labor market policies (ALMPs): incentive reinforcement, employment assistance, occupation, and human capital investment is developed and examined through ALMP expenditure profiles in selected countries.
Abstract: Active labor-market policies (ALMPs) have developed significantly over the past two decades across Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, with substantial cross-national differences in terms of both extent and overall orientation. The objective of this article is to account for cross-national variation in this policy field. It starts by reviewing existing scholarship concerning political, institutional, and ideational determinants of ALMPs. It then argues that ALMP is too broad a category to be used without further specification, and it develops a typology of four different types of ALMPs: incentive reinforcement, employment assistance, occupation, and human capital investment. These are discussed and examined through ALMP expenditure profiles in selected countries. The article uses this typology to analyze ALMP trajectories in six Western European countries and shows that the role of this instrument changes dramatically over time. It concludes that there is little regular...
Citations
More filters
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors show that the political support coalition for welfare states has been reconfigured through two processes: on the one hand, the Left may have lost support among the traditional working class, but it has substituted this decline by attracting substantial electoral support among specific parts of the expanding middle class.
Abstract: The central political claim of Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism is that class actors, through the instruments of the democratic process, can modify capitalism. Where working-class mobilization is strong, left parties have sufficient electoral support in the political arena to alter markets politically in ways that decommodify and thereby empower workers. The decline of traditional class voting, however, has profoundly changed this dynamic of welfare politics. We show that the political support coalition for welfare states has been reconfigured through two processes. On the one hand, the Left may have lost support among the traditional working class, but it has substituted this decline by attracting substantial electoral support among specific parts of the expanding middle class. On the other hand, the welfare support coalition has been stabilized through increasing support for the welfare state among right-wing political parties. We discuss the possible consequences of this 'middle-class shift' in the welfare support coalition in terms of policy consequences.
297 citations
Cites background from "The Political Economy of Active Lab..."
...…analysed the emergence of ‘new social policies’ (Bonoli, 2005), ‘social investment policies’ (Hemerijck, 2013; Morel et al., 2012) and the spread of ‘labour market activation’ policies (Bonoli, 2010) on the welfare reform agendas of European welfare states, well beyond the Nordic countries....
[...]
...Recent work on occupational risk and the insurance functions of the welfare state continues to focus on unemployment-related policies, which are particularly crucial to those with specific skills or occupational risks (e.g. Bonoli, 2010; Gingrich and Ansell, 2012; Rehm, 2009; Rueda, 2007)....
[...]
..., 2012) and the spread of ‘labour market activation’ policies (Bonoli, 2010) on the welfare reform agendas of European welfare states, well beyond the Nordic countries....
[...]
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that coordination and liberalization are two sides of the same coin in the process of corporate restructuring in the face of economic shocks, and that tighter cooperation with core workers sharpened insider-outsider divisions and were built upon service sector cost cutting through liberalization.
Abstract: What do the recent trends in German economic development convey about the trajectory of change? Has liberalization prepared the German economy to deal with new challenges? What effects will liberalization have on the coordinating capacities of economic institutions? This paper argues that coordination and liberalization are two sides of the same coin in the process of corporate restructuring in the face of economic shocks. Firms seek labour cooperation in the face of tighter competitive pressures and exploit institutional advantages of coordination. However, tighter cooperation with core workers sharpened insider-outsider divisions and were built upon service sector cost cutting through liberalization. The combination of plant-level restructuring and social policy change forms a trajectory of institutional adjustment of forming complementary economic segments which work under different rules. The process is driven by producer coalitions of export-oriented firms and core workers’ representatives rather than by firms per se.
230 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that co-ordination and liberalization are two sides of the same coin in the process of corporate restructuring in the face of economic shocks, and that tighter co-operation with core workers sharpened insider-outsider divisions and were built upon service sector cost cutting through liberalization.
Abstract: What do the recent trends in German economic development convey about the trajectory of change? Has liberalization prepared the German economy to deal with new challenges? What effects will liberalization have on the co-ordinating capacities of economic institutions? This article argues that co-ordination and liberalization are two sides of the same coin in the process of corporate restructuring in the face of economic shocks. Firms seek labour co-operation in the face of tighter competitive pressures and exploit institutional advantages of co-ordination. However, tighter co-operation with core workers sharpened insider–outsider divisions and were built upon service sector cost cutting through liberalization. The combination of plant-level restructuring and social policy change forms a trajectory of institutional adjustment of forming complementary economic segments which work under different rules. The process is driven by producer coalitions of export-oriented firms and core workers’ representatives, rather than by firms per se.
221 citations
Cites background from "The Political Economy of Active Lab..."
...Most countries’ governments have implemented reforms of labour market policy (Bonoli, 2010), unemployment insurance (Clegg, 2007) and pensions (Häusermann, 2010), altering the patterns, if not scale, of social spending and the social security position of workers....
[...]
...Most countries’ governments have implemented reforms of labour market policy (Bonoli 2010), unemployment insurance (Clegg 2007) and pensions (Häusermann 2010), altering the patterns, if not scale, of social spending and the social security position of workers....
[...]
TL;DR: Swenson as discussed by the authors examines the causal relationship between national differences in capitalist interests and divergent welfare state development in the United States and Sweden, and presents a thought-provoking and edifying work of comparative political economy.
Abstract: Capitalists Against Markets: The Making of Labor Markets and Welfare States in the United States and Sweden. By Peter A. Swenson. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. 448p. $24.95. Peter Swenson has written a thought-provoking and edifying work of comparative political economy that examines the causal relationship between national differences in capitalist interests and divergent welfare state development. Given Swenson's ambitious challenge to many existing accounts of welfare developments and his detailed historical analysis, this book should attract some well-deserved attention.
189 citations
TL;DR: This paper analyzed the relationship between social assistance, benefit adequacy, and labour market activation in 28 European welfare systems in 1990-2008 and found that social assistance seldom reaches commonly applied poverty thresholds.
Abstract: It has been suggested that income adequacy is an important condition for a fair work-test to apply. This article provides new evidence about the construction of just social minimums by analysing the relationship between social assistance, benefit adequacy, and labour market activation. Does social assistance provide benefits at levels necessary to escape poverty? To what extent is the development of benefit adequacy related to active labour market policy? The empirical analyses combine macro-level institutional data from the SaMip data set and micro-level income data for 28 European welfare systems in 1990-2008. It is shown that social assistance seldom reaches commonly applied poverty thresholds. The adequacy of social assistance has also declined, along with the increased emphasis on the activation of beneficiaries. It therefore appears difficult to perceive European social assistance programmes as just distributive instruments.
115 citations
References
More filters
TL;DR: The authors examined the role of ideas in policy making, based on the concept of policy paradigms, and found that a conventional model of social learning fit some types of changes in policy well but not the movement from Keynesian to monetarist modes of policymaking.
Abstract: This article examines the model of social learning often believed to confirm the autonomy of the state from social pressures, tests it against recent cases of change in British economic policies, and offers a fuller analysis of the role of ideas in policymaking, based on the concept of policy paradigms. A conventional model of social learning is found to fit some types of changes in policy well but not the movement from Keynesian to monetarist modes of policymaking. In cases of paradigm shift, policy respond to a wider social debate bound up with electoral competition that demands a reformulation of traditional conceptions of state-society relations.
5,505 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the political economy of skills in comparative-historical perspective is discussed, and the evolution and change in the German system of vocational training is discussed. But the evolution of skill formation in Germany is not discussed.
Abstract: 1. The political economy of skills in comparative-historical perspective 2. The evolution of skill formation in Germany 3. The evolution of skill formation in Britain 4. The evolution of skill formation in Japan and the United States 5. Evolution and change in the German system of vocational training 6. Conclusions, empirical and theoretical.
1,860 citations
"The Political Economy of Active Lab..." refers background in this paper
...same time, Germany adopted new law on vocational training, which significantly consolidated the system that had been put in place seventy years earlier.(40) Contrary to a widespread perception among welfare-state scholars, the postwar years were not an era of passive income protection....
[...]
Book•
01 Jan 2001
TL;DR: This paper examined the origins, character, effects and prospects of generous welfare states in advanced industrial democracies in the post-World War II era, showing that prolonged government by different parties results in different welfare states with strong differences in levels of poverty and inequality.
Abstract: This text offers a systematic examination of the origins, character, effects and prospects of generous welfare states in advanced industrial democracies in the post-World War II era. The authors demonstrate that prolonged government by different parties results in different welfare states, with strong differences in levels of poverty and inequality. Combining quantitative studies with historical qualitative research, the authors look closely at nine countries that achieved high degrees of social protection through different types of welfare regimes: social democratic states, Christian democratic states, and "wage earner" states.
1,593 citations
670 citations
"The Political Economy of Active Lab..." refers background in this paper
...They claim that the Nordic—and in particular the Swedish—version of ALMP was part of a major cross-class compromise that allowed the social democrats to pursue their political objectives without endangering the profitability of capital.(11) ALMPs, unlike passive income-protection policies, have what it takes to be regarded positively by employers....
[...]
TL;DR: In this paper, the main results of on-going OECD research into the effectiveness of active labour market policies are summarised and the main conclusions drawn from these results are summarized in detail.
Abstract: High and persistent unemployment has been a major blot on the economic and social record of most OECD countries since the early 1970s: the OECD average standardised unemployment rate rose from an estimated 3 per cent in 1973 to a peak of 8 per cent in 1993 before falling back to 6.4 per cent in 2000. In response to growing political concerns about the seemingly inexorable rise in unemployment, various policy blueprints were developed in the 1990s to improve labour market performance on a durable basis. Prime examples include the OECD Jobs Strategy launched in 1994 and the EU Employment Guidelines which were launched in 1997 following the Amsterdam summit. These policy blueprints assign an important role to active labour market policies. But this emphasis begs the obvious question: what is the potential contribution which active labour market policies can make as part of a strategy to combat high and persistent unemployment? In order to answer this question, it is vital to know what works among active policies and f or whom. The OECD Secretariat has been working intensively on these questions in recent years and this paper summarises the main results of our work to date. The structure of the paper is as follows. Section 1 provides some factual background on public spending on labour market policies in OECD countries over the period 1985-2000. The bulk of the paper summarises the main results of on‑going OECD research into the effectiveness of active labour market policies. This review mainly exploits two sources: (i) the recent literature on the evaluation of active labour market programme (Section 2); and (ii) in-depth country reviews and analytical studies which the OECD has conducted over the past decade on the interactions between active and passive labour market policies and the role of the public employment service (Section 3). The final section draws some conclusions.
612 citations
"The Political Economy of Active Lab..." refers result in this paper
...This is a result reached in one of the first meta-analyses of evaluation studies of ALMPs, where two OECD economists conclude that many labor-market programs are ineffective or even counterproductive in terms of their ability to bring jobless people back to market employment.(54) This may be the result of the predominant orientation of ALMPs (occupation) in the time span covered by the study (1980s and early 1990s)....
[...]