Documents Clasen, Jochen 12 results

"The notion of ‘flexicurity' has recently become a buzzword in European labour market reform. It promises to deliver a magic formula to overcome the tensions between labour market flexibility on the one hand and social security on the other hand by offering ‘the best of both worlds'. This article gives a state-of-the-art review on flexicurity. The development of the concept is set against the background of changed economic circumstances in the last two decades. The components of flexicurity are presented in more detail, followed by a review of ‘real worlds of flexicurity' in selected European countries, with Denmark and the Netherlands as the most prominent examples. The third section considers the transferability of flexicurity policies across borders. Finally, we concentrate on collective actors involved in promoting the idea of flexicurity at European, supra-national and national levels. We conclude with a discussion of some tensions within and criticisms of the concept."

"Summary Unemployment rates are insufficient indicators of the level of economic activity because they say little about the scale of non-employment in a given working-age population. Empirical research has started to recognize this and policy debates increasingly concentrate on working-age inactivity as a relevant gauge of the state of labour markets (OECD, 2003). However, the causes for transitions between employment and different states of non-employment are not well understood. Why do levels of working-age inactivity sometimes vary significantly across countries and over time? Apart from stages in the business cycle, welfare-state institutions and benefit designs can be assumed to influence movements into and out of labour markets and between different states of nonemployment. This paper investigates the impact of changes in welfare-state institutions in the UK and Germany. Analyses of longitudinal data show that economic conditions, as well as policy changes, have had significant effects on transitions between labour activity and inactivity among working-age men during the 1990s. In particular, the findings suggest that shifts to more means-tested benefit arrangements can have unintended consequences, in terms of increasing levels of labour-market detachment."

"In the past decade, active labour market policy (ALMP) has become a major topic in comparative social policy analysis, with scholars exploiting cross-national variation to seek to identify the determinants of policy development in this central area of the ‘new welfare state'. In this paper, we argue that better integration of this policy field into social policy scholarship requires rather more critical engagement with considerable methodological, conceptual and theoretical challenges in order to analyse these policies comparatively. Most fundamentally, rather more reflection is needed on what the substantially relevant dimensions of variation in ALMP from a social policy perspective actually are, as well as enhanced efforts to ensure that it is those that are being analysed and compared."

"Eine viel beachtete Darstellungsweise der Hartz-Reformen betrachtet diese als symptomatisch für das Aufkommen einer Arbeitslosensicherung dualistischer Art, die zu krassen Unterschieden zwischen der sozialen Sicherung von Arbeitsmarkt-Insidern und Arbeitsmarkt-Outsidern führt. Da die Dualisierung des Sozialschutzes als typisches Merkmal vor allem der kontinentaleuropäischen Wirtschaftsordnungen gesehen wird, impliziert diese Darstellung in gewisser Weise auch, dass die Hartz-Reformen einem deutlich von Reformen des Sozialschutzes für Arbeitslose in Skandinavien und den englischsprachigen Ländern zu unterscheidenden Denkansatz folgen. Der vorliegende Beitrag hinterfragt aus historisch-vergleichender Sicht die Behauptung, die Hartz-Reformen liefen auf eine Wende zu einem neuen Dualismus in der sozialen Sicherung bei Arbeitslosigkeit hinaus, und zeigt auf, dass diese einer ähnlichen institutionellen und Umverteilungslogik folgen wie die Reformen der meisten europäischen Länder seit den späten 1990er Jahren."

"Regulating the Risk of Unemployment offers a systematic comparative analysis of the recent adaptation of European unemployment protection systems to increasingly post-industrial labour markets. These systems were mainly designed and institutionalized in predominantly industrial economies, characterized by relatively standardized employment relationships and stable career patterns, as well as plentiful employment opportunities even for those with low skills. Over the past two to three decades they have faced the challenge of an accelerating shift to a primarily service-based economy, accompanied by demands for greater flexibility in wages and terms and conditions in low-skill segments of the labour market as well as pressures to maximise labour force participation given the more limited potential for productivity-led growth. The book develops an original framework for analysing adaptive reform in unemployment protection along three discrete dimensions of institutional change, which are termed benefit homogenization, risk re-categorization, and activation. This framework is then used to structure analysis of twenty years of unemployment protection reform in twelve European countries. In addition to mapping reforms along these dimensions, the country studies analyse the political and institutional factors that have shaped national patterns of adaptation. Complementary comparative analyses explore the effects of benefit reforms on the operation of the labour market, assess evolving patterns of working-age benefit dependency, and examine the changing role of active labour market policies in the regulation of the risk of unemployment."

"Policy-makers in advanced welfare states have increasingly expressed concerns over large numbers of working-age people claiming social security support. Accordingly, policies aimed at reducing the level of “benefit dependency” have gained prominence. However, such policies rest on shaky empirical evidence. Systematic collections of national “caseload” data are rare, social security programmes overlap and administrative categories vary over time. The internationally inconsistent treatment of national transfer programmes provides a further challenge for cross-national comparisons. This article first identifies and discusses several of these problems, and ways in which they may be addressed. It then employs administrative claimant data from six European countries as a way of illustrating trends over time and across countries. The underlying aim is to explore the scientific potential of benefit recipient numbers as an indicator for welfare state change over time and across countries."

"High levels of unemployment, or high levels of social expenditures as well as the growing demand for a flexible labour force have given new impetus to the world-wide discussion on what model to use for an efficiently operating labour market and in particular on the role of institutions. Although there seems to be a growing consensus on the restricted governmental role in recent decades, this has not been translated into a unanimous appraisal of the role of intermediary organisations, such as trade unions. There is no clear view on an appropriate distribution of responsibility between government, social partners and the market. The research project ‘distribution of responsibility for social security' aims to create a scientific basis for a clear and consistent view on the role and distribution of responsibilities between the different labour market institutions. As part of this research project, this paper provides an elaborate country study of the United Kingdom."

" This working paper by Jochen Clasen and Daniel Clegg, of the University of Edinburgh, together with Jon Kvist of the University of Southern Denmark, examines the nature of impact of the economic and political challenges engendered by the “Great Recession” on labour market policy reforms in Europe. The authors thus consider the question of whether the economic crisis has also brought a labour market policy reform crisis in its wake.



The three researchers studied six EU member states (the Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Germany, Spain and the United Kingdom) and observed different response patterns depending on the interpretative framing – or ‘narrative' – of the crisis.



In the first phase of the crisis, all countries expanded their labour market policy efforts. As crisis deepened, however, there was a clear bifurcation between those states that stepped up structural reforms intended to reduce labour market segmentation and those that turned to a more aggressive agenda of retrenchment.



The authors conclude that their findings provide grounds for both optimism and pessimism. While observing no substantial evidence of a return to the “labour shedding” policies of the 1980s, they do identify a retrenchment of labour market policy in some states, including Denmark, the country that, in the 2000s, was so vaunted in this respect as a model for others to follow. "