J. Timo Weishaupt  
  From the Manpower Revolution to the Activation Paradigm vergrößerte Ansicht in neuem Fenster  
  Explaining Institutional Continuity and Change in an Integrating Europe  
  Changing Welfare States  
  394 p., Amsterdam, Amsterdam University Press, 2011  
  ISBN: 978-90-8964-252-3  
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Abstract

This book examines the origins and evolution of labor market policy in Western Europe, while paying close attention to the OECD and the European Union as proliferators of new ideas. Three phases are identified: (a) a manpower revolution phase during the 1960s and 1970s, when most European governments emulated Swedish manpower policies and introduced/modernized their public employment services; (b) a phase of international disagreement about the root causes of, and remedies for, unemployment, triggering a diversity of policy responses during the late 1970s and 1980s; and (c) the emergence of an activation paradigm since the late 1990s, causing a process of institutional hybridization. The books main contention is that the evolution of labor market policy is not only determined by historical trajectories or coalitional struggles, but also by policy makers changing normative and cognitive beliefs. The cases studied include Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Sweden, and the United Kingdom.

Table of Contents

List of Boxes, Figures and Tables

Abbreviations

Acknowledgements

I Introduction
  I.1 The Research Questions
  I.2 Competing Predictions about Labour Market Policy Regime Change: The Argument in Brief
  I.3 Research Design, Case Selection, and the Evidence
  I.4 Book Outline
II Theoretical Approach
  II.1 Introduction
  II.2 Defining Institutions
  II.3 Historical Institutionalism: Explaining Continuity
  II.4 Historical Institutionalism: Beyond Continuity
  II.5 Causal Mechanisms to Explain Institutional Transformations: Ideas and Agency
  II.6 Three Institutional Trajectories
  II.7 Analytical Grid: Four Dimensions of Labour Market Policy Regimes

PART 1 ORIGIN AND CRISIS OF EUROPEAN LABOUR MARKET POLICY REGIMES

III Origin of European Labour Market Policy Regimes and the Manpower Revolution
  III.1 Locating the Origins of Unemployment and Labour Market Policy
  III.2 Locating the Origin of Active Manpower Policy
  III.3 The OECD and the Diffusion of Active Manpower Policy
  III.4 Five Country Cases: Austria, Denmark, Germany, Ireland, and the UK
  III.5 Conclusions
IV Labour Market Policy Regimes in Crisis: Divergence into Three Distinct Clusters
  IV.1 Labour Market Policy Regimes Under Stress: 1973-1979
  IV.2 National Policies after the First Oil Crisis: Moderate Optimism and the Expansion of Active Manpower Policies
  IV.3 Conclusions
  IV.4 After the Second Oil Crisis: Shattered Illusions and Diverging Pathways
  IV.5 National Policy Responses: Social-Investment, Labour-Shedding, and Marketisation Strategies
  IV.6 Conclusions

PART II THE EMERGENCE OF THE ACTIVATION PARADIGM

V The OECD's Repeated Reassessments and the EU as a Proliferator of New Ideas
  V.1 The New Aspiration for an "Active Society" and the Road to the 1994 OECD Jobs Study
  V.2 The European Union as a Proliferator of New Ideas: From Delors' 1993 White Paper to the European Employment Strategy
  V.3 The Consolidation of Activation and the Emergence of the PES Service Model
  V.4 Further Ideational Convergence: The Reassessed OCED Jobs Study and the Revised Lisbon Agenda
  V.5 Conclusions
VI The Emergence of the Activation Paradigm: Analyzing Institutional Hybridisation
  VI.1. Normative/Cognitive Dimension
  VI.2 Organisational Dimension
  VI.3 Financial Dimension
  VI.4 Work Incentives Dimension
  VI.5 Conclusions
VII Explaining Transformative Change in Two Crucial Cases
  VII.1 Explaining the Process of Hybridisation in Continental Europe: Germany as a "Least Likely" Case
  VII.2 Explaining Hybridisation in the Liberal World: Turning Vice into Virtue in Ireland
  VII.3 Conclusions
VIII Conclusion
  VIII.1 Do National Labour Market Policy Reform Efforts Exhibit Covariation across Western Europe, and if so, How and Why?
  VIII.2 What Impact, if any, Have the Recommendations of International Organisations such as the OECD and the EU had an National Reform Agendas?
  VIII.3 Have Recent Reform Activities, in the Context of the OECD Jobs Study and the EES, Fundamentally Transformed the Historic Composition of National Labour Market Policy Regimes, and if so, to What Effect?
  VIII.4. Reactions to the Global Financial and Economic Crisis and the Future of the Activation Paradigm

List of Interviews and Personal Conversations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes on Author:

J. Timo Weishaupt received a Ph.D. in political science at the University of Wisconsin, Madison in August 2008. Since September 2008, he is a post-doctoral fellow at the Mannheim Center for European Social Research (MZES), Germany.