scholarly journals Overstretching solidarity? Trade unions' national perspectives on the European economic and social model

2008 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 435-452 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marius R. Busemeyer ◽  
Christian Kellermann ◽  
Alexander Petring ◽  
Andrej Stuchlík
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
National Level ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Social Model ◽  
European Economic ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
National Welfare ◽  
Policy Fields ◽  
The One

The development of a European economic and social model poses serious challenges for European trade unions. On the one hand, demand for a strengthening of the social dimension of the European integration project is growing and it is realised that this cannot be achieved by unilateral action at the national level. On the other hand, the identities and organisational capacities of trade unions are deeply embedded in national welfare state institutions, limiting the leeway for a common European social model. This article presents empirical evidence from over 100 interviews with trade union leaders and politicians from 17 EU Member States on trade unions' positions in various policy fields (economic, social and competition policies). The conclusion is that unions should reflect more critically on their embeddedness in national welfare state arrangements in order to move forward together towards the realisation of a Social Europe.

The Theoretical Potential of the Within-Nation Comparison: How Sub-National Analyses Can Enrich Our Understandings of the National Welfare State

2017 ◽  
Vol 61 (8) ◽  
pp. 861-886 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prerna Singh
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Comparative Politics ◽  
National Level ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theory Building ◽  
National Welfare ◽  
Theory Generation ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
The One

This article seeks to showcase the previously underexplored theoretical potential of the recent “sub-national turn” in comparative politics. Specifically, I hope to delineate how theories derived to explain variation in an outcome across sub-national units can enrich our repertoire of theories to explain variation in the same and/or related outcomes across national units. I show the potential of this method of theory generation through an analysis of social welfare, a specially apposite outcome for this purpose because it has been studied rigorously at the both the national and sub-national levels of analyses. I argue that sub-national analyses can, on the one hand, help us refine and rethink national-level theories for the same outcomes. They can push us to nuance and extend established national theories and show us how the same variables and mechanisms that have been hypothesized to explain cross-country variations might work differently, even in opposite directions, within countries. On the other hand, sub-national analyses can push us past the established repertoire of national-level explanations to bring to light new (or forgotten) theories. In this way, this article seeks to challenge cross-country analyses as the exclusive domain of theory building in comparative politics.

scholarly journals The emergence of New Economic Governance and its impact on Services of General Economic Interest

2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 98-127
Author(s):  
Marta Legnaioli
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Economic Governance ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Protection Mechanisms ◽  
National Welfare ◽  
General Economic Interest ◽  
New Economic Governance ◽  
The Impact

Abstract This paper evaluates the impact of austerity measures on national social protection mechanisms and on the European Social Model. The study is based on an in-depth analysis of austerity measures adopted in Italy and Portugal and the evolution of several indicators, such as unemployment rates and the percentage of citizens at risk of poverty. The analysis demonstrates that measures adopted in the field of new economic governance have had an impact on the organization and provision of SGEIs and have affected the solidity of the national welfare state. It will be argued that in this context the promotion of a social dimension of the EU requires innovative methods for the regulation of new economic governance.

scholarly journals An Argument and an Outline for a New Employment Scheme

2017 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Henning Hansen ◽  
Jens Lind ◽  
Iver Hornemann Møller
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Reference Model ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Employment Policy ◽  
Incentive Structure ◽  
Wage Formation ◽  
Common Reference ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

<div class="page" title="Page 1"><div class="layoutArea"><div class="column"><p>Liberalism is celebrating triumphs in these years. As faith in the welfare state and Keynesianism began to crack in the 1970s, capitalist principles were revitalised and the old virtues and dogmas were found and dusted. Now all that restrained the free competition in the market were considered a danger to the growth and the welfare. The impact of trade unions on wage formation should be limited, the welfare state should be reduced, and ‘modernised’ and the incentive structure strengthened by reducing social policy standards. Unemployment was again considered a natural part of the economy where individual choices were crucial to whether you were unemployed or not: lower your wage claims and you would probably get a job. </p><p>As a part of the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, a consensus between the representatives of capital and labor had to be invented. An ideal model for European employment policy should be found to supplement the strengthening of the internal market and the canonisation of the free movement of capital, labor, goods, and services. The result was the so-called social dimension, which could act as a counter weight for the employees. The Danish labor market policy from the 1960s became the prototype of the European employment policy and was called flexicurity, and from the late 1990s until the crisis’ breakout in 2008, flexicurity celebrated triumphs as a political-ideological construction for a common reference model (Larsson 1998).</p></div></div></div>

scholarly journals Disproved or vindicated? Stein Rokkan’s ‘impossibility theorem’ on welfare democracy and European integration

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-12
Author(s):  
Maurizio Ferrera
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Impossibility Theorem ◽  
The European Union ◽  
The Future ◽  
National Welfare ◽  
Original Argument

In the mid-1970s, the great Norwegian scholar Stein Rokkan argued that the consolidation of the national welfare state was going to set definite limits to European integration. While the impetuous strengthening of the latter – from Maastricht to Lisbon – has largely disproved Rokkan’s factual expectations, developments during the last decade seem to have vindicated the theoretical insights which underpinned his original argument. If appropriately re-elaborated, such insights can help us to identify the conditions under which the economic and social dimension of the European Union might be reconciled in the future.

Labour relations in central and eastern Europe and the European social model

2003 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Heribert Kohl ◽  
Hans-Wolfgang Platzer
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Central And Eastern Europe ◽  
National Level ◽  
The State ◽  
Social Model ◽  
Labour Relations ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
European Social Model ◽  
Transitional Society ◽  
Characteristic Lines

A comparison of structural developments in labour relations in the eight CEE candidate countries at company, sectoral and national levels in relation to the European social model shows that despite a transformation geared towards western European models, labour relations in CEE countries are developing along nationally characteristic lines and are showing considerable variations. Significant features which they do have in common, except for Slovenia, are the overall weak and fragmented structures at company level, with the widespread absence of a sectoral level of action and organisation and a pronounced emphasis on the state, which also characterises tripartism at national level. Compared to the current EU Member States, these countries have their own evolutionary ‘transitional-society’ type of labour relations, which will considerably increase the diversity of structures and policies in the enlarged EU and will thus present considerable challenges for future transnational labour relations.

The EMU and the European Social Dimension

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francesco Costamagna
Keyword(s):  
European Union ◽  
National Level ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Social Model ◽  
The European Union ◽  
High Stakes ◽  
Political Autonomy ◽  
Political Processes ◽  
The Creation ◽  
The Stability

The Economic Monetary Union (EMU) has been famously portrayed as a ‘metaphor for the European Union’, involving high stakes for the integration process as a whole. Since its origins, the creation of the EMU was an eminently political project, with a direct bearing on the prospects of the European Union (EU) as a polity, its social model, and its constitutional identity. Yet, the main political aspects of the project were mostly discarded in the process that led to the establishment of the EMU’s institutional structure and its substantive rules. The creation of the common currency was not accompanied by the establishment of supranational institutions with a strong political mandate to accommodate conflicting interests, while the exercise of political autonomy at national level has been increasingly seen as a potential danger for the stability of the whole edifice. The crisis and the ensuing reform of the European economic governance consolidated the technocratic character of the EMU architecture and hardened its grip on national political processes.

The European Trade Union Federations within the European polity: ETUFs and international trade union activity

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-305
Author(s):  
Torsten Müller ◽  
Hans-Wolfgang Platzer
Keyword(s):  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
National Level ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
European Level ◽  
The Social ◽  
Institutional Structures ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
European Trade ◽  
National Trade

This article examines the European Trade Union Federations’ (ETUFs) role within the European polity in representing the interests of their affiliates vis-à-vis decision-makers at European level. In order to influence processes at European level, however, ETUFs need to aggregate and coordinate the often heterogeneous interests of their affiliates. This dual focus of the ETUFs’ activities is captured in the article by using the concept of the ‘logic of membership’ and ‘logic of influence’ to investigate how changes in their internal and external environment have affected the ETUFs’ capacity to act within the institutional structures and decision-making processes that constitute the European polity. A key finding of the article is that the European Commission’s renewed focus on strengthening the social dimension in principle opens up new opportunities for ETUFs to increase their influence at European level. The analysis, however, also shows that this is only possible if the ETUFs manage to mobilise the support of their affiliates for joint European strategies. This in turn requires national trade unions to overcome their tendency to retreat to the national level to cope with transnational challenges.

scholarly journals Public attitudes towards a European minimum income benefit: How (perceived) welfare state performance and expectations shape popular support

2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 404-420 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sharon Baute ◽  
Bart Meuleman
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Public Attitudes ◽  
Public Support ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Policy Proposal ◽  
Minimum Income ◽  
Eu Member States ◽  
National Welfare

The economic crisis and the unequal degree to which it has affected European Union (EU) member states have fuelled the debate on whether the EU should take responsibility for the living standards of European citizens. The current article contributes to this debate by investigating for the first time public support for an EU-wide minimum income benefit scheme. Through an analysis of data from the European Social Survey 2016, our results reveal that diverging national experiences and expectations are crucial in understanding why Europeans are widely divided on the implementation of such a benefit scheme. The analysis shows that (1) welfare state generosity and perceived welfare state performance dampen support, (2) those expecting that ‘more Europe’ will increase social protection levels are much more supportive, (3) the stronger support for a European minimum income benefit in less generous welfare states is explained by more optimistic expectations about the EU’s domestic impact and (4) lower socioeconomic status groups are more supportive of this policy proposal. These findings can be interpreted in terms of sociotropic and egocentric self-interests, and illustrate how (perceived) performance of the national welfare state and expectations about the EU’s impact on social protection levels shape support for supranational social policymaking.

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