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Labour market activation policies aimed at those with multiple barriers to employment require inter-agency collaboration between local organizations providing social and employment services. This local collaborative context is shaped by different institutional logics (state, markets, professions and community) that are crucial for policy implementation. Using case studies of nine German, UK and Swedish cities, it is argued that different institutional logics help shape the form and operation of local collaboration between different agencies and actors and thus the concrete support for service users at the local level. Although all three countries are characterized by centralized employment policies, each city shows a prevalence, but not exclusivity, of certain institutional logics over others. These differences, partly reflecting the local context, are likely to lead to local variations in understandings of solidarity, policy implementation, inter-agency collaboration and networks of actors and national–local tensions. The paper suggests that an institutional logics approach provides a useful framework for helping to understand local variations and potential national–local policy conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Active labour market programmes (ALMPs) should help young adults who collect welfare benefits 'get back on track'. Despite the recent proliferation of research on ALMPs, only scant attention has been paid to their employment quality effects. Aiming to fill this gap, this article evaluates the long-term effects of German ALMPs on young adults' employment quality. We measure employment quality with two indicators: one on whether someone has a job with earnings below the low wage threshold and the other on whether they have a job with earnings above the low wage threshold. These measures help us assess whether ALMPs prevent young adults from being at risk of poverty again. In addition, we study whether ALMP effects vary by social origin. We distinguish young adults by whether their families collected benefits when they were adolescents, as a marker for disadvantaged social origin. We analyse in-firm training and one-euro jobs as examples for enabling and workfare programmes, which exist across other welfare states as well. Empirically, we apply an entropy balancing approach to a self-drawn sample from registry data to analyse ALMP treatment effects. Results show that in-firm training enhances young adults' employment quality in the long run. The effects tend to be lower for those from disadvantaged families though, indicating that disadvantages embedded in social origin remain. The workfare programme harms participants' employment quality, with those less disadvantaged suffering the greatest damage. Overall, our research provides evidence that in-firm training effectively enables young adults to find a job of higher quality, addressing their risk of social exclusion and proving useful in promoting upward social mobility. Nonetheless, the article also raises urgent issues concerning how the needs of those most vulnerable can be addressed by social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dualization is a recurrent concept in analysing the political economy of labour market reforms in European countries. While it helps to make sense of changes at the margin of labour markets, so far, it remains unclear whether there are repercussions for standard employees. The paper examines this question by assessing changes in the German labour market. We argue that the growing availability of non-standard work increases pressure on core workers to accept more flexibility. The study yields two results. First, labour market reforms were, indeed, targeted at outsiders and continued in small and sometimes contradictory steps. The direction of change was determined by the socio-economic problem pressure of the respective period, but independent of government composition. Second, while insiders objected to such marginal flexibilization in principle — once the reforms were in place — they reacted with wage moderation and other instruments, thus strengthening their competitiveness relative to flexible workers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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 non-employment. 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the recent increase in the inflows of refugees to Europe, governments have made considerable investments in public policies aimed at facilitating the labour market integration of refugees. Despite these efforts, the labour market participation of refugees remains low. This situation raises the question of whether employers actually appreciate these public policies and whether refugees' participation in specific active labour market policies (ALMPs), such as work practice or wage subsidies, increases their likelihood of being hired. In this article, we take a novel approach and combine employers' evaluations of specific ALMPs with their attitudes towards refugees. We argue that these labour market policies can only be successful when employers hold positive attitudes towards refugees in the first place. We investigate this question by means of a factorial survey experiment with employers in Austria, Germany and Sweden. Our results show that, indeed, employers' evaluations of fictional refugee candidates who participated in ALMPs are influenced by their attitudes towards this group. Participation in these policy measures is regarded positively only by those employers who already hold positive attitudes towards refugees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Asking whether social policies can alter the experience of unemployment, this article systematically evaluates whether participation in active labour market policies (ALMPs) influences the well-being of the unemployed. With consistently high unemployment rates in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, scholars have started to examine the impact of ALMP schemes on a variety of tangible economic outcomes, but place little focus on their sociological and psychological impacts. Using a novel panel survey, the IZA Evaluation Dataset, I employ a propensity score matching approach combined with difference-in-differences to address selection on both observables and unobservables. Consistent with my theoretical predictions, I find evidence that ALMP programmes that are most like regular employment, namely wage subsidies and subsidized self-employment, have the strongest impact on the well-being of the unemployed. Looking at regional and gender differences indicates interesting effect heterogeneity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The German Hartz IV reform has been a far-reaching labour market reform which reduced unemployment benefit generosity. The encompassing economic evaluation tends to confirm that the reform was an initial spark for the improvement of German labour market performance. At the same time, welfare state scholars have recently expressed concerns that such reforms may have far-reaching and detrimental political effects. In this article, I contribute to this discussion and analyse the political effects of Hartz IV including decreasing satisfaction with democracy, decreasing political participation and an increase of protest voting and political polarization. To identify the effect of the reform, I rely on bi-weekly representative survey data and exploit the announcement of the Hartz reforms as natural experiment. Comparing political attitudes of persons interviewed immediately before and after the announcement in regression analyses confirms that there was a sharp drop in satisfaction with democracy and the intention to participate in the next election, as well as increasing affinity to non-established and left-wing parties. Supplementary analyses show that the effect is stronger for unemployed workers who are more directly affected by the reform. These results are robust to different model specifications and estimation techniques. Moreover, placebo tests for past and previous years refute the concern that the effect is driven by other factors such as calendar time effects. These findings indicate that the political consequences of welfare state retrenchment go far beyond electoral punishment. This is possibly more relevant today than ever before as the current increase of populist parties substantially impedes the functioning of political systems in modern democracies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The issue of welfare targeting is back on the political agenda in European welfare states. Benefit recipients are subject to different rules, depending on age, family status and work. For instance, strict conditions and harsh sanctions apply, in particular, to young unemployed people. This article investigates public opinion towards welfare targeting in three policy areas – unemployment benefits, conditionality of benefits and sanctions – and utilizes a factorial vignette experiment presented within a representative German survey. The results suggest strong support for welfare targeting. Respondents are more likely to offer generous benefits and fewer obligations and sanctions to unemployed people who are elderly, have caring responsibilities, are of German ethnicity and have high job-seeking ambitions. The negative effect of foreign ethnicity is moderated by the ideological standpoint of the respondent, highlighting the mechanisms underlying welfare chauvinism. Accordingly, policy support strongly depends on the individual circumstances of the affected target group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The majority of the European countries experienced a turn towards activation policies during the last decades. The aim of increasing employment rates of groups formerly excluded from the labour market has required closer links with training, family or social policies with employment policy. As a result of this, we can observe modifications also in regard to policy governance, particularly emphasizing the role of the local level in implementing integrated activation policies. This article aims at testing the hypothesis of whether higher levels of stakeholder participation in the policy process lead to greater policy integration. In an explorative manner, the research hypothesis will be tested with reference to two very different cases of local activation policy. Driving factors for the differential impact of participation on policy integration will be identified through the analysis of two in-depth case studies. A qualitative process-tracing method is used in order to conduct our analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates differences in the likelihood of becoming an insider in Germany and the United Kingdom. Consistent with recent literature on dualization it contends that insider protection is more pronounced in the corporatist system and conservative welfare state of Germany. In conjunction with micro-level labour market sociology, the study argues that this affects the job matching process of the labour market. Using individual level panel data in event history models, it contrasts leaving non-employment for an insider position, that is, permanent full-time employment, with staying on the outside of the core labour market, that is, remaining without employment or taking up an atypical job. Results demonstrate that insider positions are harder to attain in the German labour market as a consequence of the institutional context that makes the said posts so appealing in the first place. At the same time, the German labour market regime strengthens the mechanisms of selection in terms of gender, age and education. The insider/outsider divide thus works in two ways. First, it increases inequality between insiders and outsiders in terms of economic and positional stability. Second, a stronger divide interacts with micro-level matching processes on the labour market. By reinforcing social differences in the chance to obtain an insider position, inequality is thus even further pronounced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are party preferences of atypical workers distinct from those in stable employment? The welfare state literature debates this question, but very few empirical studies have been conducted. We examine the German case, being an example of a welfare state with strong social insurance traditions where the rise of atypical employment has been conspicuous. In particular, we test the argument that preferences of labour market outsiders may not differ because outsiders share households with insiders. We find that labour market status significantly affects party preferences. Compared with standard employees, atypical workers have stronger preferences for small left-wing parties. Living together with a labour market insider neutralizes these party preferences, but this type of household is not very common. Moreover, atypical workers differ from the unemployed by not participating less in elections than insiders. Therefore, it is expedient to distinguish between different types of labour market outsiders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The European Employment Strategy (EES) has opened up new dynamics of Europeanization in the area of social policy. This article proposes to pay more attention to national core executives and their strategic use of the EES when considering its impact. Through core executives, the EES may not only affect domestic policy agendas, but also decision-making on reform. A comparative case study of activating employment policy reforms in the Netherlands and Germany evaluates expectations about how these agents upload and download ideas to and from the EU level. The findings indicate that uploading is facilitated by holding the EU presidency and a good fit with EES prescriptions, while downloading does not seem to depend on prior uploading and degree of fit but on other domestic factors. True strategic use of the EES by core executives following a sequence of uploading and downloading appears to be contingent on several contextual factors. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Family policies have been expanded in many OECD countries, whilst developments along other welfare state dimensions have been characterized by retrenchment. Although the contribution of gender analyses of the welfare state to a better understanding of family policies is widely acknowledged, the literature so far has largely failed to provide a comparative account explaining the recent expansions of employment-oriented family policies in countries that were previously categorized as pursuing policies in accordance with the strong male breadwinner model. This article aims to make a contribution to the comparative literature by investigating the socioeconomic conditions and politics of employment-oriented family policy expansions in Britain and Germany since the 1990s. We pay special attention to processes of post-industrialisation and especially changed skill compositions as well as the role of key policy actors, with a special focus on organized business. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Since 2003, the German Public Employment Service has been experimenting with the contracting-out of various services. One of the new labour market programmes is Personnel Service Agencies (PSAs), which provide client firms with jobseekers on a temporary assignment basis and are responsible for integrating jobseekers into non-subsidized employment. By contracting-out employment services, the Public Employment Service seeks to exploit efficiency gains characteristic of enterprises that compete in quasi-markets. In order to integrate jobseekers as rapidly as possible, a result-oriented system of incentives has been developed. This article describes the institutional set- ting and examines its appropriateness for efficient job placement services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent reforms in Swiss and German old-age insurance and family policy included elements directed at both ‘old’ and ‘new’ social needs. ‘Old risks’, such as old age and unemployment, are mainly covered by income-related insurance schemes for standard industrial breadwinners. By contrast, ‘new’ needs, such as infrastructure to reconcile work and care or insurance of atypical employment biographies, concern mainly ‘new’ risk groups, such as young people or women. While reforms directed at ‘old risks’ mainly focused on cost containment, ‘new’ social policies aimed at gender equality or the increase of labour-market participation. In this article, I argue that the emergence of modernizing policies covering new social needs leads to new conflict lines in social policy making, which differ from the distributional class conflict. Instead, I expect value coalitions and cross-class alliances on these policies. In addition, I argue that in a consensus-democratic institutional context, such new alliances form more easily. These hypotheses are tested with reference to recent reforms in pension and family policy in Germany and Switzerland. Coalition dynamics are examined by means of process analysis and multidimensional scaling. Empirical evidence largely confirms the hypotheses, but also points out the need for further differentiation of policies covering new social needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]