scholarly journals Relying on weak governments: Austrian trade unions and the politics of smoothed dualization

2017 ◽  
Vol 45 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Rathgeb
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Trade Union ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Labour Market Policy ◽  
Active Labour Market Policy ◽  
Market Policy ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Power Resources

Austrian political actors have improved the protection of outsiders by expanding the coverage of labour rights, social security, and active labour market policy spending in the past two decades. The article attributes these ‘solidaristic’ traits of Austrian labour market policy change to the persistent reliance of weak governments on trade union support in the mobilisation of a durable consensus. When governments are internally divided and prone to reform deadlocks, they face a powerful incentive to share policy-making authority with the social partners. Despite a significant decline in power resources, the Austrian trade union confederation has therefore remained influential enough to compensate outsiders for growing economic uncertainty on a volatile labour market. To substantiate this claim empirically, the article draws on primary and secondary sources as well as interview evidence with policy-making elites.

The Danish Labour Market Model

2020 ◽  
pp. 558-576 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laust Høgedahl
Keyword(s):  
Collective Bargaining ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Union Density ◽  
Market Model ◽  
Market Regulation ◽  
Labour Market Policy ◽  
Active Labour Market Policy ◽  
Market Policy ◽  
Active Labour

The Danish labour market model is renowned for combining a high degree of flexibility for employers and security for workers. In addition, the labour market parties (trade unions and employer organizations) have a long tradition of conducting collective bargaining to regulate key elements such as wages and working conditions. Since collective agreements cover important components of labour market regulation, Danish labour market policy has been focused on correcting imperfections in the labour market through an active labour market policy. However, since the new millennium, a number of policy changes have created a significant impact on the Danish labour market model, especially in terms of eroding the security elements of the model. Additional fundamental changes might also be linked to structural effects such as a decreasing trade union density and declining collective bargaining coverage in some parts of the private sector.

Dualising the Swedish model: insiders and outsiders and labour market policy reform in Sweden: an overview

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Johan Bo Davidsson
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Labour Market Policy ◽  
Active Labour Market Policy ◽  
Social Insurance System ◽  
Market Policy ◽  
Swedish Model ◽  
Welfare Institutions ◽  
Active Labour ◽  
Fiscal Austerity

For many decades it seemed that the Swedish model was immune to change. Welfare scholars saw in Sweden a paragon of an equal society based on a generous welfare state that had withstood the pressures of globalisation. While it is true that some welfare institutions are still intact, that is no longer the case in labour market policy. This cannot be explained by fiscal austerity imposed by the EU; rather it was the economic crisis in the early 1990s that first set reforms in motion. This chapter traces labour market reforms in Sweden over the past two decades. The pattern suggested here is one in which labour market outsiders have borne the brunt of reforms. This can be seen in the manner in which labour market flexibility was introduced, the fact that many of the unemployed now stand outside the social insurance system, in the declining value of social assistance benefits and perhaps most strikingly in the radical cuts to spending on active labour market policy.

scholarly journals Policy evaluation via a statistical control: A non-parametric evaluation of the ‘Want2Work’ active labour market policy

2015 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 635-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne Lindley ◽  
Steven Mcintosh ◽  
Jennifer Roberts ◽  
Carolyn Czoski Murray ◽  
Richard Edlin
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Policy Evaluation ◽  
Labour Market Policy ◽  
Statistical Control ◽  
Active Labour Market Policy ◽  
Market Policy ◽  
Active Labour ◽  
Non Parametric

The Dutch model: An Obvious Candidate for the ‘Third Way’?

1999 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 103-121 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anton Hemerijck ◽  
Jelle Visser
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Labour Market ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Labour Market Policy ◽  
Policy Changes ◽  
Third Way ◽  
Active Labour Market Policy ◽  
Market Policy ◽  
Tightly Coupled

While the progressive European politicians are on the lookout for a new model of ‘third way’ capitalism with a human face, after the (temporary?) defeat of the Swedish, Dutch welfare state reform occupies a prominent place in many commentaries.Although it attracted only international attention in the mid- 1990s, the ‘Dutch miracle’ has its basis in policy changes in the early 1980s. For a full explanation of the Dutch experience we must go back at least fifteen years, and study the combination of problem loads, power shifts, institutions, politics and ideas, in three ‘tightly coupled’ policy domains of the Dutch welfare state: industrial relations, social security, and labour market policy. The return to wage moderation took place in the early followed by a series of reforms in the systems of social security in the late 1980s and early 1990s. From the mid-1990s, finally, the adoption of an active labour market policy stance, in order to enhance overall efficiency and create a new domestic balance between wages and social benefits, gained political currency. In this article we present a stylised narrative of these policy changes—what happened, how it happened and what it meant. We demonstrate that these three policy shifts, although embedded in different corporate actors, were interrelated; they created the conditions and the demand for one another, and neither of these policies could have been successful on its own.

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