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Abstract： The objective of this article is to provide an account of the activation turn that has taken place in most OECD countries over the last two decades. Using a political science perspective, it puts forward a number of explanations that help us understand why this happened. It argues that three factors are particularly helpful in order to account for this shift: the development of post-industrial labour markets in OECD economies; the failure of alternative approaches to deal with mass unemployment and the wish of political parties to claim credit for innovative and modern labour market reforms. This argument is illustrated by the trajectories followed in seven European countries Denmark, UK, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France and Italy.
Key words： (active) labour market policy; ALMP; activation; welfare reform; unemployment
Over the last twenty years, most Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development （OECD） countries have reoriented their social policies in a more active direction. The objective of social policies for working age people is increasingly the promotion of a quick entry or return to market employment. This objective is not entirely new. Unemployment insurance, for instance, was always meant as a temporary income replacement benefit, and recipients were expected to be actively looking for work. However, while in the past this objective was mostly simply stated, today it is also translated into actual policy measures, such as more investment in public (and private) employment services, temporary job subsidies, or more pressure on beneficiaries to re-enter the labour market.
This trend is a general one, and seems to be happening across welfare regimes. The shift is perhaps clearest in continental Europe, because in this part of the world it constitutes a clear U-turn in relation to previous policy. During the postwar years, continental European countries like Germany, France, and the Netherlands, had developed some of the world’s most generous income replacement programmes (old age pensions, invalidity benefit, unemployment insurance). In the aftermath of the oil crisis of the 1970s, these countries further expanded this largely passive welfare state, by encouraging people to take early retirement, or by facilitating access to invalidity benefit to people who had difficulties finding a job (in the Netherlands).
The trend concerns also other countries. English speaking countries were often at the front in this reorientation process, though activation is more in line with the liberal character of these welfare states. Finally, it also concerns the Nordic countries. In fact, contrary to widespread perceptions, the Nordic welfare states have not always been ″active welfare states. ″In the 1980s, Denmark had an underdeveloped system of active labour market policy and Sweden used its own mostly to provide alternatives to market employment, not to help people back into jobs. But, as it will be shown below, these two countries did undergo a reorientation towards the active paradigm in the mid- to late 1990s. The shift is perhaps less clear in southern Europe. Even though spending on active labour market policies (ALMPs) has increased over the last two decades, it remains very low in comparison to other parts of the OECD world.
The objective of this article is to provide an account of the activation turn that has taken place in most OECD countries over the last two decades. Using a political science perspective, it puts forward a number of explanations that help us understand why this happened. The article is divided into four main parts. It begins by providing some quantitative evidence of the activation turn. It then moves on to explain why this development is in many ways puzzling. Next, it briefly presents trajectories of policy change in seven European countries (Denmark, UK, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, and Italy). Finally, it discusses three different hypothesis that help make sense of the observed developments.
Figure 1 shows the development of spending on active labour market policies (ALMPs). This notion includes a large number of different interventions that aim at bringing non-working individuals back into jobs. The OECD has developed a classification system for these interventions, which is used in figure 1. Looking at the trend since the mid-1990s, one can see a clear decline in spending on the less active types: job creation and training. These two types of interventions are less directly geared towards taking up employment. Direct job creation, in particular, consists in providing unemployed people with an alternative to market employment, usually for a limited time period. During the same period, spending on the most work-oriented types of intervention has remained stable. However, since the period concerned (19952007) is a period of falling unemployment, stability in spending means de facto an increase in the effort made. It should be noted that the general drop in ALMP spending that one can see in the 20032007 period is entirely due to the lower unemployment rates during these years. It disappears if the graph is made using unemployment weighted figures.
Figure 1 Spending on ALMP as a Proportion of GDP by Type, 19852007, Unweighted Average of 22 OECD CountriesSource: OECD.Statistics on www.oecd.org.
Figures on ALMPs over the 19852007 period strongly confirm the claim that labour market policy has taken an active turn. In general OECD countries tend to put a stronger emphasis on the policies that are more related to the promotion of entry into unsubsidised jobs and less on those that tend to constitute alternatives to market employment. This trend in the composition of ALMP spending trend is visible in all main welfare regimes: liberal, conservative, and social democratic (graphs not reproduced). Less so in southern Europe, because ALMPs were virtually non-existent in 1985, and so one does not see the decline of direct job creation (though one sees the expansion of the other components).
Spending figures reflect only part of the active turn in labour market policy. In fact, not all relevant policy changes result in more spending. Important reforms concerning the strengthening of work incentives for jobseekers, such as stricter job search requirements or benefit conditionality, do not necessarily impact on spending, but they certainly do on the pressure put on beneficiaries to reintegrate the labour market. They should be included in our assessment of the extent to which policy has taken an active turn.
However, data problems severely limit our ability to summarise changes in this field. There have been some attempts at collecting comparable information with regard to the extent to which beneficiaries of unemployment benefit are expected to look for work［12］. The evidence they find is consistent with the notion of a generalised ″activation″ turn since the mid-1990s. Comparing his 2005 study with a smaller earlier one, Hasselpflug concludes that, between 1997 and 2004, access to benefit became more difficult in a majority of the countries covered (12 out of 16). Countries that introduced stricter access are found across welfare regimes, suggesting that the trend is a general one［1］. These findings are confirmed by a similar survey carried out by the OECD which finds that ″Countries seem to be increasing the number and variety of instruments used to ′activate′ jobseekers, focusing on density of contacts, verification of job search, the set-up of individual action plans and referrals to ALMPs after a period of unsuccessful job search″［2］209.
Ⅱ.The Puzzles
The emergence and spread of activation poses a number of research problems, or puzzles. First, this development is taking place in a context of serious budgetary pressures, which makes expansion of social policy unlikely. Lower rates of growth, population ageing and welfare state maturation have resulted in an economic climate characterised by, as Pierson aptly put it, ″permanent austerity.″ In such a situation, social policy-making is about ″retrenchment,″ i.e., reducing or at least containing rising expenditures［3］. Instead, what we are seeing is a big effort being put in reorienting unemployment policy. How can we account for this development?
The second puzzle one encounters when studying active social policy is the reduced relevance of differences among welfare regimes. Until the mid-1990s the consensus among social policy specialists was that different welfare regimes had developed radically different responses to similar socio-economic problems. In short, facing an employment and a budgetary crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s, English speaking countries turned to (neo-) liberal solutions such as welfare retrenchment, labour market deregulation, and a general liberalisation of their economies. In contrast, continental European countries responded to the same shock by using the welfare state in order to reduce labour supply: early retirement, or easily accessible invalidity benefit were the tools. The Nordic countries took another route, based on investment in public services and active labour market policies. As a result observers concluded that different welfare regimes had developed very different types of responses to broadly similar social and economic problems［45］.
What is striking today is that the re-orientation of welfare states towards active social policies spans across welfare regimes. To be sure, differences between, say, Sweden, the UK, and Germany, remain substantial. But the direction of policy change is remarkably similar across these three countries: more active social policies. Even a country like Sweden, which many have singled out as the pro-employment welfare state par excellence, has further strengthened the active dimension of its welfare state in the late 1990s/early 2000s. The vast majority of OECD countries are implementing the active social policy paradigm, certainly with different emphases and in different ways, but they clearly are moving in the same direction. This observation contradicts what we thought we knew about the influence of past policies and welfare arrangements more in general on the current process of social policy adaptation. It demands an explanation.
The third puzzle refers to differences. The move towards active social policy is fairly generalised, but some countries, located essentially in southern Europe, are clearly lagging behind. These countries have generally seen an increase in labour force participation rates, but this is a result of some relaxation in labour law, mostly through the introduction of new types of labour contracts that do not enjoy all the protections available to core workers. The result of this development has been a growing cleavage between those who continue to enjoy good social and employment protection, often referred to as insiders, and those on the new types of contracts, or the outsiders［67］.
Ⅲ.The Activation Turn in Seven Countries
In order to provide answers to the three puzzles presented above, next we look at developments in labour market policy in seven European countries, chosen so as to represent the various welfare state models that exist in Europe. The order of the narrative accounts reflects the timing of the activation turn in the different countries. I begin with the pioneers (Denmark, the UK, and the Netherlands), continue with Sweden and Germany, who were somewhat slower in adopting a clear active orientation in their unemployment policy; and conclude with France and Italy, two countries that have been lagging behind in this respect.
1.Denmark
Denmark was among the first countries to reorient its unemployment policy. In 1993, the Social democrats were returned to power in a very unfavourable context, with the unemployment rate stable above 10%, and a weak economy. One year later, they adopted a reform of labour market policy that many regarded as a major watershed. The 1994 reform removed the possibility of re-gaining entitlement to unemployment insurance through participation in labour market programmes. It also set a seven-year limit to unemployment benefit. This period was subdivided in two phases: first a passive period of four years and then an active period of three years. Work availability requirements were also strengthened and individual action plans were introduced［89］. Some early retirement measures were also abandoned in 1994. In addition, the reform introduced also the decentralisation of employment services, making it possible for labour offices at the regional level to develop labour market programmes suitable for their area.
The 1994 reform clearly signalled a change of direction in Danish labour market policy. It contained many of the features that have in the meanwhile become typical of activation systems throughout OECD countries. At the same time, with a seven-year entitlement period to unemployment benefit, pressure to re-enter the labour market remained relatively low if compared to current standards. The reform was based on the recommendations made by a tripartite outfit known as the Zeuthen committee, consisting mostly of representatives of both the trade unions and employer organisations. The social partners obtained important concessions, such as an important role in the implementation of labour market measures. At the same time, however, they agreed to reorient unemployment policy in the direction of activation［8］245.
Subsequent reforms further strengthened work incentives and activation elements. The duration of the entitlement period was reduced first to five years (1996) then to four years (1998). The ″passive″ period was also shortened to two years and to six months for unemployed people younger than 25. After this period, claimants had both a right and an obligation to participate in a labour market programme.
The 1998 reform meant a further acceleration of the trend towards activation. First policy for youth unemployed took a step towards stronger work incentives and investment in human capital. Measures adopted included a six-month limit on standard unemployment benefit for the under 25 and the obligation to participate in training for 18 months, with a benefit equal to 50% of the standard unemployment benefit. Second, with the adoption of a ″Law on active social policy,″ the principle of activation was extended to social assistance claimants［8］241243. Like in past reforms, together with incentive-strengthening measures, more supportive instruments were also adopted. This is the case of a programme known as flexjobs, which subsidises up to two thirds of labour costs for disabled people, without time limits［10］.
In the meanwhile the labour market situation had improved dramatically. The unemployment rate which had peaked at over 12% in 1993, was down to 4% in 2001. Some of the most costly labour market measures were discontinued, deemed no longer necessary in the more favourable labour market context.
A more favourable labour market and the election of a new Liberal-conservative coalition government in 2002 did not change the overall policy orientation which continued to be characterised by a strong preference for activation. Reforms adopted by the Liberal-conservative government have continued to strengthen work incentives.
2.The United Kingdom
It is difficult to appropriately time the activation turn in the UK, as many elements of it were put in place gradually by the Conservative governments since the early 1990s. In fact, New Labour’s flagship programme, known as the New Deals, resembled closely the Conservative ″Project work.″ With the Labour party’s accession to power in 1997, however, active labour market policy became a high profile, highly publicised area of government policy. Already in the 1997 election manifesto, the Labour party emphasised the mix of duties and responsibilities that was to become a trademark of the Third Way:″The best way to tackle poverty is to help people into jobs-real jobs. The unemployed have a responsibility to take up the opportunity of training places or work, but these must be real opportunities″［11］.
In 1998, schemes known as ″New deals″ were introduced for young and long term unemployed people and for lone parents. These were complemented in 1999 with a New deal for partners of unemployed people and were subsequently strengthened on various occasions. The New deals have been described as packages of interventions. Joining one of these programmes is compulsory for most unemployed people after a certain time spent out of the labour market (between 3 and 12 months). With some variation, these schemes involve the assignment of a personal adviser, and the adoption of a ″personal action plan.″ The first stage consists of more or less intensive interviews geared towards job search. It can also include, if deemed necessary, confidence-building measures or treatments to deal with social problems such as substance abuse. If the jobseeker is still unemployed after this phase, then he or she will be assigned to a compulsory active labour market programme. For instance, in the New Deal for Young People, those who are still jobless after four months of job search, are assigned to either training, subsidised employment, voluntary work or an environmental task force［12］.
Together with the emphasis on ALMPs, the newly elected Labour government developed other labour market policy tools, coherent with its objective of moving as many non-working people as possible into employment. The most important tools in this were a national minimum wage, introduced in 1998 and increased in subsequent years, and a tax credit programme. The minimum wage was set initially at around 47% of median earnings. It was increased in 2004 to approx. 52% of median earnings［13］. The tax credit programme, initially known as working families tax credits, replaced a previous programme introduced in 1986 by the Conservative government known as family credits. Tax credits are paid to families with dependent children working at least 16 hours a week. The New deals, the minimum wage and the tax credits resulted in a coherent approach in social and labour market policy, designed to make work both attractive and possible for most non-working people［14］.
Since the 1990s, active labour market policy in the UK has been strongly work-oriented. Other tools of active labour market policy played a comparatively smaller role. It is more difficult to answer the question of who bears the political responsibility for the activation turn in the UK. The Labour government elected in 1997 clearly followed a policy line that had already been developed by the Conservatives in the early 1990s. What certainly changed was the scale of activation, and perhaps above all the hype associated with itD.Clegg,″Activating the Multi-Tiered Welfare State: Social Governance, Welfare Politics and Unemployment Policies in France and the United Kingdom,″ Florence, European University Institute, PhD Thesis,2005,p.195. .
3.The Netherlands
The Social democrats (PvdA) emerged from the 1994 election as the largest party, and its leader, Wim Kok, became the new Prime Minister, supported by a so-called ″Purple coalition″ (Social democrats and liberals). The new government position in relation to social policy was to avoid reducing benefit levels and duration, and the emphasis was on promoting employment. ″Jobs, jobs and more jobs,″ became Kok’s famous motto［15］223. In reality, some retrenchment measures were adopted［16］. However, activation became the leitmotif of social policy.
A job creation programme in the public sector for young and long term unemployed people (known as Melkert –jobs after the name of the PvdA Minister of social affairs) was launched in 1994 (the programme was later discontinued in 1998). In 1998 activation was made compulsory for the long term and youth unemployed, who could be assigned to one of different options such as training, subsidised employment or social activation, for those deemed unlikely to re-enter the labour market［17］.
In 2001, employment services were reorganised, and were replaced by one stop shops called ″Centre for work and incomes.″ At the same time, a competitive market for privately provided employment services was established［18］. The logic of activation began to be applied also to disability insurance. In 1998, a system of differentiated contribution rates was introduced. Under previous legislation, all employers paid the same contribution rate. Under the new system, contribution rates are related to ″risk″ or to the proportion of employees experiencing disability. A new law on the reintegration of disabled people was also adopted in the same year［19］. By the year 2000 the Netherlands had managed, through a series of reforms adopted in rapid succession, to transform one of the most generous and less demanding disability schemes in Europe into one of the most work oriented ones.
In 2002 the Christian democrats were back in power, and ruled the country first in coalition with the liberals and since 2006, with the Social democrats. Labour market policy continued on the course of an ever stronger work orientation, with a strong inclination to experiment with new tools. In 2004, a reform of the law on social assistance replaced the notion of ″suitable work″ with the one of ″generally accepted work.″ In practical terms this meant that the recipient’s qualifications or previous work history was now disregarded. The new law also reduced the exemptions from the obligation to seek employment［18］.
One scheme after the other, the whole of the Dutch social security system was transformed from a typical Bismarckian, income guarantee welfare regime to one of the clearest exemplar of active labour market policy. The road taken was clearly characterised by a combination of retrenchment in cash benefits and the expansion of services. Spending on active labour market policy increased only slightly between 1985 and 2005, but the unemployment rate nearly halved over the same time period, suggesting a considerable increase in the efforts made to re-integrate non-working people in the labour market.
4.Sweden
Sweden is often considered a pioneer of active labour market policy, as it developed a system for retraining redundant employees in the 1950s. By the 1980s/early 1990s, Swedish labour market policy was more oriented towards providing alternatives to market employment, in the shape of job creation programmes or training that did not lead to labour market re-entry［20］. Since the mid-1990s, however, ALMPs have adopted a more pragmatic orientation, favouring labour market re-entry for excluded individuals. For instance, the number of labour market programmes was increased, and more was done also in terms of experimenting. Work requirements were strengthened so that those still jobless after 100 days of unemployment may be required to accept a job anywhere in the country and a wage up to 10% lower than the unemployment benefit［21］211.
The unemployment insurance reform of February 2001 further strengthened the pro-employment orientation of active labour market policy. This was done through a number of measures. First, the possibility to renew entitlement to unemployment insurance through participation in labour market programmes was abolished. This practice was identified in several studies as detrimental to the re-employment chances of the long term unemployed, who were de facto encouraged to spend their life between labour market programmes and open unemployment. Second, the reform introduced an ″activity guarantee″ for long term unemployed people or people at risk of becoming long term unemployed. This consists of more individualised activities clearly geared towards re-employment［2223］.
Some commentators have interpreted this reorientation of Swedish active labour market policy in terms of a return to the original model. According to Anxo and Niklasson:
The reorientation of ALMP in the early 1990s towards more supply-oriented programmes may be seen as a return to the initial conception of ALMP interventions, and better able to meet the increasing demand for skill upgrading. In fact, the primacy of demand-side measures during the 1970s and 1980s may be viewed as a deviation from the original ALMP strategy initiated during the late 1950s. ［24］360
What is important is that Sweden has turned towards the same mix of positive and negative incentives in labour market policies that characterises most countries today. Though tempted in the 1970s and particularly in the 1980s to use ALMPs as a de facto ″labour reduction tool,″ Sweden managed to return to a more employment-oriented use of labour market programmes. This was not done without difficulties. For example, the practice of considering participation in labour market programmes as an activity that generated an entitlement to unemployment insurance was not phased out until 2001, considerably later than in Denmark which took this action in 1994. The political responsibility for the reorientation was clearly with the Social democrats in power without interruptions from 1996 to 2006.
5.Germany
It is generally assumed that Germany embraced the activation paradigm with the Hartz reforms of 20032004. In fact, measures going in this direction were clearly adopted throughout the 1990s. Unemployment benefit was made less attractive through a series of retrenchment measures, targeting in particular long term unemployment benefit (Arbeitslosenhilfe). The most important development was arguably the 1996 reform of the Employment Promotion Act. On that occasion, long term unemployment benefit was further reduced and stricter availability and job search requirements were introduced. According to some commentators, this reform signalled a fundamental paradigm shift in the German approach to labour market problems. As a result of the reform, unemployed people were expected to accept job offers even if earnings and qualifications were lower than in their former job［25］69.
These measures did not succeed in preventing further deterioration of labour market conditions in the country, with unemployment continuously rising until 1998. As a result, labour market problems were at the top of the agenda of the newly elected Social democratic government led by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. The government turned initially to an ad hoc corporatist type of outfit: the Alliance for jobs, which included representatives of employers and the unions. However, conflicting demands made the Alliance unable to produce adequate policy proposals. Employers were keen on wage restraint agreements, while the unions refused to include this item and wanted to focus the proposals on vocational training. Because of its inability to produce a proposal for a substantial labour market policy reform, the Alliance was eventually discontinued in 2003［26］. Several ideas that were to become prominent in the following years, such as the motto ″foerdern und fordern″ (promote and oblige), were nonetheless introduced by this outfit［25］.
Active social policies provide opportunities for credit claiming at a relatively limited cost for the public purse. In addition, most of the tools that go under the rubric of active social policy can be presented as win-win solutions to the social problems they are meant to address, and as a result generating broad support. Pro-welfare groups and parties may welcome a bigger effort in this field; employers and right of centre parties may like the positive impact on labour supply of these policies, and perhaps, their promise to be cost-effective, at least in the medium term, by reducing reliance on transfer programmes. Employment promoting social policies, as well as notions like activation and social investment, facilitate the sort of ″ambiguous agreement″ that has proven instrumental in making difficult reforms possible［43］. Different actors support certain measures, but do so for very different reasons. This makes active social policies suitable for credit claiming.
In sum, active social policy has many of the features that are needed to perform credit claiming: a relatively broad constituency based on a common interest (taxpayers and parents, respectively), a modern flavour, a (presumed) win-win quality. What makes them particularly attractive in the current context of permanent austerity is of course the fact that even major, highly visible expansion in these fields is comparatively inexpensive for the public purse.
While there is potential for credit claiming in active social policy, there are also some dangers. These new policies may run against deeply held normative perceptions among sections of the electorate, in relation to the proper roles of the state and the family with regard to the care of children or in relation to prevailing notions of appropriate social citizenship rights. In the end, the German Hartz IV reforms turned out to be a major blow in terms of support for the Red-Green coalition government, and probably one of the main causes of its fall in 2005. However, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Other governments and political leaders who have championed activation have taken credit for it and won subsequent elections. Here examples abound: the British Labour Party and Tony Blair in 2001 and in 2005; Denmark’s Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, who presided over the 1994 activation oriented reform of unemployment policy and stayed on as prime Minister until 2001; or the Netherlands’s Wim Kok who was instrumental in promoting the reorientation of the Dutch welfare state towards activation and stayed in power between 1994 and 2002. The credit claiming opportunities provided by active social policies in the late 1990s and early 2000s did pay off.
Ⅴ.Why the Activation Turn?
The discussion above suggests that the activation turn is the result of a conjunction of factors. First, the precondition for the activation turn is socio-economic change and the emergence of a new type of unemployment problem, low-skill unemployment, in a context in which low skill labour is highly unattractive. The second important factor is the fact that many countries tried different approaches to the unemployment problem, and obtained unsatisfactory results. This was the case of both the strategies based on the provision of alternatives to market employment (Continental Europe, Sweden) and of those based on deregulation (the UK, the US). Third, political competition, as always in competitive democracies, played a role. Under tight budgetary constraints, activation provided a feasible and credible new approach in the fight against unemployment. The activation turn made it possible for cash strapped government to be able to engage in credit claiming, but at an affordable cost.
Southern Europe remained behind. Even tighter budget constraints in these countries have made activation difficult. In addition, the lack of the necessary administrative infrastructure contributed to make difficult to reorient effectively policy for the unemployed. However, southern Europe has probably found a low cost functional equivalent to activation: the selective deregulation of what used to be some of the most rigid labour markets. Italy did manage to achieve some job growth during the 20052008 boom, but mostly thanks to the new flexible contracts that had been introduced a few years before.
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Key words： (active) labour market policy; ALMP; activation; welfare reform; unemployment
Over the last twenty years, most Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development （OECD） countries have reoriented their social policies in a more active direction. The objective of social policies for working age people is increasingly the promotion of a quick entry or return to market employment. This objective is not entirely new. Unemployment insurance, for instance, was always meant as a temporary income replacement benefit, and recipients were expected to be actively looking for work. However, while in the past this objective was mostly simply stated, today it is also translated into actual policy measures, such as more investment in public (and private) employment services, temporary job subsidies, or more pressure on beneficiaries to re-enter the labour market.
This trend is a general one, and seems to be happening across welfare regimes. The shift is perhaps clearest in continental Europe, because in this part of the world it constitutes a clear U-turn in relation to previous policy. During the postwar years, continental European countries like Germany, France, and the Netherlands, had developed some of the world’s most generous income replacement programmes (old age pensions, invalidity benefit, unemployment insurance). In the aftermath of the oil crisis of the 1970s, these countries further expanded this largely passive welfare state, by encouraging people to take early retirement, or by facilitating access to invalidity benefit to people who had difficulties finding a job (in the Netherlands).
The trend concerns also other countries. English speaking countries were often at the front in this reorientation process, though activation is more in line with the liberal character of these welfare states. Finally, it also concerns the Nordic countries. In fact, contrary to widespread perceptions, the Nordic welfare states have not always been ″active welfare states. ″In the 1980s, Denmark had an underdeveloped system of active labour market policy and Sweden used its own mostly to provide alternatives to market employment, not to help people back into jobs. But, as it will be shown below, these two countries did undergo a reorientation towards the active paradigm in the mid- to late 1990s. The shift is perhaps less clear in southern Europe. Even though spending on active labour market policies (ALMPs) has increased over the last two decades, it remains very low in comparison to other parts of the OECD world.
The objective of this article is to provide an account of the activation turn that has taken place in most OECD countries over the last two decades. Using a political science perspective, it puts forward a number of explanations that help us understand why this happened. The article is divided into four main parts. It begins by providing some quantitative evidence of the activation turn. It then moves on to explain why this development is in many ways puzzling. Next, it briefly presents trajectories of policy change in seven European countries (Denmark, UK, Netherlands, Sweden, Germany, France, and Italy). Finally, it discusses three different hypothesis that help make sense of the observed developments.
Figure 1 shows the development of spending on active labour market policies (ALMPs). This notion includes a large number of different interventions that aim at bringing non-working individuals back into jobs. The OECD has developed a classification system for these interventions, which is used in figure 1. Looking at the trend since the mid-1990s, one can see a clear decline in spending on the less active types: job creation and training. These two types of interventions are less directly geared towards taking up employment. Direct job creation, in particular, consists in providing unemployed people with an alternative to market employment, usually for a limited time period. During the same period, spending on the most work-oriented types of intervention has remained stable. However, since the period concerned (19952007) is a period of falling unemployment, stability in spending means de facto an increase in the effort made. It should be noted that the general drop in ALMP spending that one can see in the 20032007 period is entirely due to the lower unemployment rates during these years. It disappears if the graph is made using unemployment weighted figures.
Figure 1 Spending on ALMP as a Proportion of GDP by Type, 19852007, Unweighted Average of 22 OECD CountriesSource: OECD.Statistics on www.oecd.org.
Figures on ALMPs over the 19852007 period strongly confirm the claim that labour market policy has taken an active turn. In general OECD countries tend to put a stronger emphasis on the policies that are more related to the promotion of entry into unsubsidised jobs and less on those that tend to constitute alternatives to market employment. This trend in the composition of ALMP spending trend is visible in all main welfare regimes: liberal, conservative, and social democratic (graphs not reproduced). Less so in southern Europe, because ALMPs were virtually non-existent in 1985, and so one does not see the decline of direct job creation (though one sees the expansion of the other components).
Spending figures reflect only part of the active turn in labour market policy. In fact, not all relevant policy changes result in more spending. Important reforms concerning the strengthening of work incentives for jobseekers, such as stricter job search requirements or benefit conditionality, do not necessarily impact on spending, but they certainly do on the pressure put on beneficiaries to reintegrate the labour market. They should be included in our assessment of the extent to which policy has taken an active turn.
However, data problems severely limit our ability to summarise changes in this field. There have been some attempts at collecting comparable information with regard to the extent to which beneficiaries of unemployment benefit are expected to look for work［12］. The evidence they find is consistent with the notion of a generalised ″activation″ turn since the mid-1990s. Comparing his 2005 study with a smaller earlier one, Hasselpflug concludes that, between 1997 and 2004, access to benefit became more difficult in a majority of the countries covered (12 out of 16). Countries that introduced stricter access are found across welfare regimes, suggesting that the trend is a general one［1］. These findings are confirmed by a similar survey carried out by the OECD which finds that ″Countries seem to be increasing the number and variety of instruments used to ′activate′ jobseekers, focusing on density of contacts, verification of job search, the set-up of individual action plans and referrals to ALMPs after a period of unsuccessful job search″［2］209.
Ⅱ.The Puzzles
The emergence and spread of activation poses a number of research problems, or puzzles. First, this development is taking place in a context of serious budgetary pressures, which makes expansion of social policy unlikely. Lower rates of growth, population ageing and welfare state maturation have resulted in an economic climate characterised by, as Pierson aptly put it, ″permanent austerity.″ In such a situation, social policy-making is about ″retrenchment,″ i.e., reducing or at least containing rising expenditures［3］. Instead, what we are seeing is a big effort being put in reorienting unemployment policy. How can we account for this development?
The second puzzle one encounters when studying active social policy is the reduced relevance of differences among welfare regimes. Until the mid-1990s the consensus among social policy specialists was that different welfare regimes had developed radically different responses to similar socio-economic problems. In short, facing an employment and a budgetary crisis in the late 1970s and early 1980s, English speaking countries turned to (neo-) liberal solutions such as welfare retrenchment, labour market deregulation, and a general liberalisation of their economies. In contrast, continental European countries responded to the same shock by using the welfare state in order to reduce labour supply: early retirement, or easily accessible invalidity benefit were the tools. The Nordic countries took another route, based on investment in public services and active labour market policies. As a result observers concluded that different welfare regimes had developed very different types of responses to broadly similar social and economic problems［45］.
What is striking today is that the re-orientation of welfare states towards active social policies spans across welfare regimes. To be sure, differences between, say, Sweden, the UK, and Germany, remain substantial. But the direction of policy change is remarkably similar across these three countries: more active social policies. Even a country like Sweden, which many have singled out as the pro-employment welfare state par excellence, has further strengthened the active dimension of its welfare state in the late 1990s/early 2000s. The vast majority of OECD countries are implementing the active social policy paradigm, certainly with different emphases and in different ways, but they clearly are moving in the same direction. This observation contradicts what we thought we knew about the influence of past policies and welfare arrangements more in general on the current process of social policy adaptation. It demands an explanation.
The third puzzle refers to differences. The move towards active social policy is fairly generalised, but some countries, located essentially in southern Europe, are clearly lagging behind. These countries have generally seen an increase in labour force participation rates, but this is a result of some relaxation in labour law, mostly through the introduction of new types of labour contracts that do not enjoy all the protections available to core workers. The result of this development has been a growing cleavage between those who continue to enjoy good social and employment protection, often referred to as insiders, and those on the new types of contracts, or the outsiders［67］.
Ⅲ.The Activation Turn in Seven Countries
In order to provide answers to the three puzzles presented above, next we look at developments in labour market policy in seven European countries, chosen so as to represent the various welfare state models that exist in Europe. The order of the narrative accounts reflects the timing of the activation turn in the different countries. I begin with the pioneers (Denmark, the UK, and the Netherlands), continue with Sweden and Germany, who were somewhat slower in adopting a clear active orientation in their unemployment policy; and conclude with France and Italy, two countries that have been lagging behind in this respect.
1.Denmark
Denmark was among the first countries to reorient its unemployment policy. In 1993, the Social democrats were returned to power in a very unfavourable context, with the unemployment rate stable above 10%, and a weak economy. One year later, they adopted a reform of labour market policy that many regarded as a major watershed. The 1994 reform removed the possibility of re-gaining entitlement to unemployment insurance through participation in labour market programmes. It also set a seven-year limit to unemployment benefit. This period was subdivided in two phases: first a passive period of four years and then an active period of three years. Work availability requirements were also strengthened and individual action plans were introduced［89］. Some early retirement measures were also abandoned in 1994. In addition, the reform introduced also the decentralisation of employment services, making it possible for labour offices at the regional level to develop labour market programmes suitable for their area.
The 1994 reform clearly signalled a change of direction in Danish labour market policy. It contained many of the features that have in the meanwhile become typical of activation systems throughout OECD countries. At the same time, with a seven-year entitlement period to unemployment benefit, pressure to re-enter the labour market remained relatively low if compared to current standards. The reform was based on the recommendations made by a tripartite outfit known as the Zeuthen committee, consisting mostly of representatives of both the trade unions and employer organisations. The social partners obtained important concessions, such as an important role in the implementation of labour market measures. At the same time, however, they agreed to reorient unemployment policy in the direction of activation［8］245.
Subsequent reforms further strengthened work incentives and activation elements. The duration of the entitlement period was reduced first to five years (1996) then to four years (1998). The ″passive″ period was also shortened to two years and to six months for unemployed people younger than 25. After this period, claimants had both a right and an obligation to participate in a labour market programme.
The 1998 reform meant a further acceleration of the trend towards activation. First policy for youth unemployed took a step towards stronger work incentives and investment in human capital. Measures adopted included a six-month limit on standard unemployment benefit for the under 25 and the obligation to participate in training for 18 months, with a benefit equal to 50% of the standard unemployment benefit. Second, with the adoption of a ″Law on active social policy,″ the principle of activation was extended to social assistance claimants［8］241243. Like in past reforms, together with incentive-strengthening measures, more supportive instruments were also adopted. This is the case of a programme known as flexjobs, which subsidises up to two thirds of labour costs for disabled people, without time limits［10］.
In the meanwhile the labour market situation had improved dramatically. The unemployment rate which had peaked at over 12% in 1993, was down to 4% in 2001. Some of the most costly labour market measures were discontinued, deemed no longer necessary in the more favourable labour market context.
A more favourable labour market and the election of a new Liberal-conservative coalition government in 2002 did not change the overall policy orientation which continued to be characterised by a strong preference for activation. Reforms adopted by the Liberal-conservative government have continued to strengthen work incentives.
2.The United Kingdom
It is difficult to appropriately time the activation turn in the UK, as many elements of it were put in place gradually by the Conservative governments since the early 1990s. In fact, New Labour’s flagship programme, known as the New Deals, resembled closely the Conservative ″Project work.″ With the Labour party’s accession to power in 1997, however, active labour market policy became a high profile, highly publicised area of government policy. Already in the 1997 election manifesto, the Labour party emphasised the mix of duties and responsibilities that was to become a trademark of the Third Way:″The best way to tackle poverty is to help people into jobs-real jobs. The unemployed have a responsibility to take up the opportunity of training places or work, but these must be real opportunities″［11］.
In 1998, schemes known as ″New deals″ were introduced for young and long term unemployed people and for lone parents. These were complemented in 1999 with a New deal for partners of unemployed people and were subsequently strengthened on various occasions. The New deals have been described as packages of interventions. Joining one of these programmes is compulsory for most unemployed people after a certain time spent out of the labour market (between 3 and 12 months). With some variation, these schemes involve the assignment of a personal adviser, and the adoption of a ″personal action plan.″ The first stage consists of more or less intensive interviews geared towards job search. It can also include, if deemed necessary, confidence-building measures or treatments to deal with social problems such as substance abuse. If the jobseeker is still unemployed after this phase, then he or she will be assigned to a compulsory active labour market programme. For instance, in the New Deal for Young People, those who are still jobless after four months of job search, are assigned to either training, subsidised employment, voluntary work or an environmental task force［12］.
Together with the emphasis on ALMPs, the newly elected Labour government developed other labour market policy tools, coherent with its objective of moving as many non-working people as possible into employment. The most important tools in this were a national minimum wage, introduced in 1998 and increased in subsequent years, and a tax credit programme. The minimum wage was set initially at around 47% of median earnings. It was increased in 2004 to approx. 52% of median earnings［13］. The tax credit programme, initially known as working families tax credits, replaced a previous programme introduced in 1986 by the Conservative government known as family credits. Tax credits are paid to families with dependent children working at least 16 hours a week. The New deals, the minimum wage and the tax credits resulted in a coherent approach in social and labour market policy, designed to make work both attractive and possible for most non-working people［14］.
Since the 1990s, active labour market policy in the UK has been strongly work-oriented. Other tools of active labour market policy played a comparatively smaller role. It is more difficult to answer the question of who bears the political responsibility for the activation turn in the UK. The Labour government elected in 1997 clearly followed a policy line that had already been developed by the Conservatives in the early 1990s. What certainly changed was the scale of activation, and perhaps above all the hype associated with itD.Clegg,″Activating the Multi-Tiered Welfare State: Social Governance, Welfare Politics and Unemployment Policies in France and the United Kingdom,″ Florence, European University Institute, PhD Thesis,2005,p.195. .
3.The Netherlands
The Social democrats (PvdA) emerged from the 1994 election as the largest party, and its leader, Wim Kok, became the new Prime Minister, supported by a so-called ″Purple coalition″ (Social democrats and liberals). The new government position in relation to social policy was to avoid reducing benefit levels and duration, and the emphasis was on promoting employment. ″Jobs, jobs and more jobs,″ became Kok’s famous motto［15］223. In reality, some retrenchment measures were adopted［16］. However, activation became the leitmotif of social policy.
A job creation programme in the public sector for young and long term unemployed people (known as Melkert –jobs after the name of the PvdA Minister of social affairs) was launched in 1994 (the programme was later discontinued in 1998). In 1998 activation was made compulsory for the long term and youth unemployed, who could be assigned to one of different options such as training, subsidised employment or social activation, for those deemed unlikely to re-enter the labour market［17］.
In 2001, employment services were reorganised, and were replaced by one stop shops called ″Centre for work and incomes.″ At the same time, a competitive market for privately provided employment services was established［18］. The logic of activation began to be applied also to disability insurance. In 1998, a system of differentiated contribution rates was introduced. Under previous legislation, all employers paid the same contribution rate. Under the new system, contribution rates are related to ″risk″ or to the proportion of employees experiencing disability. A new law on the reintegration of disabled people was also adopted in the same year［19］. By the year 2000 the Netherlands had managed, through a series of reforms adopted in rapid succession, to transform one of the most generous and less demanding disability schemes in Europe into one of the most work oriented ones.
In 2002 the Christian democrats were back in power, and ruled the country first in coalition with the liberals and since 2006, with the Social democrats. Labour market policy continued on the course of an ever stronger work orientation, with a strong inclination to experiment with new tools. In 2004, a reform of the law on social assistance replaced the notion of ″suitable work″ with the one of ″generally accepted work.″ In practical terms this meant that the recipient’s qualifications or previous work history was now disregarded. The new law also reduced the exemptions from the obligation to seek employment［18］.
One scheme after the other, the whole of the Dutch social security system was transformed from a typical Bismarckian, income guarantee welfare regime to one of the clearest exemplar of active labour market policy. The road taken was clearly characterised by a combination of retrenchment in cash benefits and the expansion of services. Spending on active labour market policy increased only slightly between 1985 and 2005, but the unemployment rate nearly halved over the same time period, suggesting a considerable increase in the efforts made to re-integrate non-working people in the labour market.
4.Sweden
Sweden is often considered a pioneer of active labour market policy, as it developed a system for retraining redundant employees in the 1950s. By the 1980s/early 1990s, Swedish labour market policy was more oriented towards providing alternatives to market employment, in the shape of job creation programmes or training that did not lead to labour market re-entry［20］. Since the mid-1990s, however, ALMPs have adopted a more pragmatic orientation, favouring labour market re-entry for excluded individuals. For instance, the number of labour market programmes was increased, and more was done also in terms of experimenting. Work requirements were strengthened so that those still jobless after 100 days of unemployment may be required to accept a job anywhere in the country and a wage up to 10% lower than the unemployment benefit［21］211.
The unemployment insurance reform of February 2001 further strengthened the pro-employment orientation of active labour market policy. This was done through a number of measures. First, the possibility to renew entitlement to unemployment insurance through participation in labour market programmes was abolished. This practice was identified in several studies as detrimental to the re-employment chances of the long term unemployed, who were de facto encouraged to spend their life between labour market programmes and open unemployment. Second, the reform introduced an ″activity guarantee″ for long term unemployed people or people at risk of becoming long term unemployed. This consists of more individualised activities clearly geared towards re-employment［2223］.
Some commentators have interpreted this reorientation of Swedish active labour market policy in terms of a return to the original model. According to Anxo and Niklasson:
The reorientation of ALMP in the early 1990s towards more supply-oriented programmes may be seen as a return to the initial conception of ALMP interventions, and better able to meet the increasing demand for skill upgrading. In fact, the primacy of demand-side measures during the 1970s and 1980s may be viewed as a deviation from the original ALMP strategy initiated during the late 1950s. ［24］360
What is important is that Sweden has turned towards the same mix of positive and negative incentives in labour market policies that characterises most countries today. Though tempted in the 1970s and particularly in the 1980s to use ALMPs as a de facto ″labour reduction tool,″ Sweden managed to return to a more employment-oriented use of labour market programmes. This was not done without difficulties. For example, the practice of considering participation in labour market programmes as an activity that generated an entitlement to unemployment insurance was not phased out until 2001, considerably later than in Denmark which took this action in 1994. The political responsibility for the reorientation was clearly with the Social democrats in power without interruptions from 1996 to 2006.
5.Germany
It is generally assumed that Germany embraced the activation paradigm with the Hartz reforms of 20032004. In fact, measures going in this direction were clearly adopted throughout the 1990s. Unemployment benefit was made less attractive through a series of retrenchment measures, targeting in particular long term unemployment benefit (Arbeitslosenhilfe). The most important development was arguably the 1996 reform of the Employment Promotion Act. On that occasion, long term unemployment benefit was further reduced and stricter availability and job search requirements were introduced. According to some commentators, this reform signalled a fundamental paradigm shift in the German approach to labour market problems. As a result of the reform, unemployed people were expected to accept job offers even if earnings and qualifications were lower than in their former job［25］69.
These measures did not succeed in preventing further deterioration of labour market conditions in the country, with unemployment continuously rising until 1998. As a result, labour market problems were at the top of the agenda of the newly elected Social democratic government led by Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. The government turned initially to an ad hoc corporatist type of outfit: the Alliance for jobs, which included representatives of employers and the unions. However, conflicting demands made the Alliance unable to produce adequate policy proposals. Employers were keen on wage restraint agreements, while the unions refused to include this item and wanted to focus the proposals on vocational training. Because of its inability to produce a proposal for a substantial labour market policy reform, the Alliance was eventually discontinued in 2003［26］. Several ideas that were to become prominent in the following years, such as the motto ″foerdern und fordern″ (promote and oblige), were nonetheless introduced by this outfit［25］.
Active social policies provide opportunities for credit claiming at a relatively limited cost for the public purse. In addition, most of the tools that go under the rubric of active social policy can be presented as win-win solutions to the social problems they are meant to address, and as a result generating broad support. Pro-welfare groups and parties may welcome a bigger effort in this field; employers and right of centre parties may like the positive impact on labour supply of these policies, and perhaps, their promise to be cost-effective, at least in the medium term, by reducing reliance on transfer programmes. Employment promoting social policies, as well as notions like activation and social investment, facilitate the sort of ″ambiguous agreement″ that has proven instrumental in making difficult reforms possible［43］. Different actors support certain measures, but do so for very different reasons. This makes active social policies suitable for credit claiming.
In sum, active social policy has many of the features that are needed to perform credit claiming: a relatively broad constituency based on a common interest (taxpayers and parents, respectively), a modern flavour, a (presumed) win-win quality. What makes them particularly attractive in the current context of permanent austerity is of course the fact that even major, highly visible expansion in these fields is comparatively inexpensive for the public purse.
While there is potential for credit claiming in active social policy, there are also some dangers. These new policies may run against deeply held normative perceptions among sections of the electorate, in relation to the proper roles of the state and the family with regard to the care of children or in relation to prevailing notions of appropriate social citizenship rights. In the end, the German Hartz IV reforms turned out to be a major blow in terms of support for the Red-Green coalition government, and probably one of the main causes of its fall in 2005. However, this seems to be the exception rather than the rule. Other governments and political leaders who have championed activation have taken credit for it and won subsequent elections. Here examples abound: the British Labour Party and Tony Blair in 2001 and in 2005; Denmark’s Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, who presided over the 1994 activation oriented reform of unemployment policy and stayed on as prime Minister until 2001; or the Netherlands’s Wim Kok who was instrumental in promoting the reorientation of the Dutch welfare state towards activation and stayed in power between 1994 and 2002. The credit claiming opportunities provided by active social policies in the late 1990s and early 2000s did pay off.
Ⅴ.Why the Activation Turn?
The discussion above suggests that the activation turn is the result of a conjunction of factors. First, the precondition for the activation turn is socio-economic change and the emergence of a new type of unemployment problem, low-skill unemployment, in a context in which low skill labour is highly unattractive. The second important factor is the fact that many countries tried different approaches to the unemployment problem, and obtained unsatisfactory results. This was the case of both the strategies based on the provision of alternatives to market employment (Continental Europe, Sweden) and of those based on deregulation (the UK, the US). Third, political competition, as always in competitive democracies, played a role. Under tight budgetary constraints, activation provided a feasible and credible new approach in the fight against unemployment. The activation turn made it possible for cash strapped government to be able to engage in credit claiming, but at an affordable cost.
Southern Europe remained behind. Even tighter budget constraints in these countries have made activation difficult. In addition, the lack of the necessary administrative infrastructure contributed to make difficult to reorient effectively policy for the unemployed. However, southern Europe has probably found a low cost functional equivalent to activation: the selective deregulation of what used to be some of the most rigid labour markets. Italy did manage to achieve some job growth during the 20052008 boom, but mostly thanks to the new flexible contracts that had been introduced a few years before.
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