This study proposes to investigate market activation policies maintained by European welfare states in the 2000's. The reasons that push EU governments to follow activation policies for some risk groups such as women, elderly, disabled people, etc. are the main rationale for the current paper. From this point forth, some joint programmes and implementations , which are Active Labour Market Policies (ALMP) and Social Investment Strategies (SIS), will be underlined. The effectiveness of these policies on minimizing unemployment in EU region will be looked over. In the study, beside the theoretical framework , some specific implementations and institutions remind activation policies in the UK and Germany will be dealt with. In relation to this, some statistical information regarding the consequences of the activation policies will be given. In doing so, it is proposed to make some critical analyses on the main subject examined in the paper. It should be noted that current paper focuses on the 2000's by assuming that this period is a milestone for EU countries to implement joint welfare policies in a liberal perspective. Even today, these policies give shape for the socioeconomic and demographic policies in EU region as the precautions of post-industrial period.
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Journal of Social Policy
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United in Diversity?
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Development and Society
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The post-war settlement rested on confidence that state welfare combined with neo-Keynesian economic management supported economic progress and enhanced social stability. New approaches from the 1970s onwards inspired by monetarism saw extensive state welfare as a damaging economic burden. The welfare settlement that is currently emerging in European debates argues that a welfare state centred on social investment, combined with appropriate de-regulation and use of social benefits to support employment mobility can again contribute to economic and social objectives in a virtuous spiral of growth and justice. In practice, however, most European states have been far more successful in what might broadly be called negative activation (less regulation, restrictions on passive benefits and targeted help for high-risk groups), than in investment to enhance the knowledge base and improve mobility. The differences between the new social investment welfare state and more limited de-regulated welfare system seem to be less marked in practice than the tenor of policy debate implies.
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Modern social policy represents a key component in Europe’s advanced political economies. The European welfare state in the shape and form in which it developed in the second half of the twentieth century represents a unique historical achievement. Never before in history, as Fritz Scharpf puts it, ‘has democratic politics been so effectively used to promote civil liberty, economic growth, social solidarity, and public well-being’ (Scharpf, 2003). The defining feature of the postwar welfare state is that social protection came to be firmly anchored on the explicit normative commitment to grant social rights to citizens in areas of human need (Esping-Andersen, 1994: 712). This implied the expansion of mass education as an instrument for equal opportunities, access to high quality health care for everyone, together with the introduction of a universal right to real income, in T. H. Marshall’s seminal work, Citizenship and Social Class (1950), ‘not proportionate to the market value of the claimant’ (Marshall, 1950: 110). Social citizenship held out a promise of the enlargement, enrichment, and equalization of people's ‘life chances’ (Marshall, 1950: 107). Thus Marshall defined social policy as the use of democratic ‘political power to supersede, supplement, or modify operations of the economic system in order to achieve results which the economic system would not achieve of his own’ (Marshall, 1975: 15). In his first report, Social Insurance and Allied Services, Lord Beveridge saw “freedom from want” to be the pivotal objective of the welfare state (Beveridge, 1942). In his 1945 Full Employment in a Free Society, however, Beveridge came to view employment, active participation, or inclusion in productive work as a key function of being an accepted part of a larger collective identity (Beveridge, 1945). In Beveridge’s participatory view on full employment, social citizenship went beyond the right to a decent income, to include right to live from labor, to combine their income with the recognition of a social function. Jobs benefit people by giving them enhanced opportunities for self-actualization, personal identity, self-esteem, and the feeling of belonging to a community. Inclusion through the labor market remains a cornerstone of every policy strategy of social inclusion. Participating in the labor market is today the most important form of social interaction and, as such, is an indispensable element in achieving social cohesion. In the words of Guenther Schmid: “Not being wanted is worse than being poor” (Schmid, 2008: 3).
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* Researcher and lecturer at the Complutense University of Madrid, Faculty of Social Sciences 1 The author wishes to thank Kathleen Llanwarne for her excellent translation. This article incorporates some of the discussions published by the author in earlier works and was produced in the framework of the following projects 'Qualitative evaluation of activation policies: the limits of the active and the passive' (Spanish Education and Science Ministry project, SEJ2007-64604) and 'Protection and flexicurity. The modernisation of the public employment services' (FIPROS 2008/35 Ministry of Labour and Immigration project). Summary A key role in selecting and defining the notions underpinning labour and social policies has been taken up by the European institutions. It is argued in this article that there is a need, in analysing the ideas put forward by these institutions, to maintain, in parallel, a twofold analytical stance. While it is necessary to focus on the European institutions' preferred modes of governance in relation to employment and social questions, it is equally important to conduct a 'meta-analysis' of their policy formulations. Taking as a prime example the ambiguous and polyphonic notion of 'flexicurity', presented in the policy discourse as a response to the new challenges of work, this article discusses the new modes of governance proposed by the European institutions in relation to 'the social question'. ❖❖❖ Sommaire Les institutions européennes constituent de plus en plus un espace de référence dans le domaine du travail et des politiques sociales. Dans cet article, l'auteur préconise, lorsqu'il s'agira d'analyser les propositions formulées par ces institutions, l'adoption d'une approche analytique à double facette. D'une part, il est essentiel de se focaliser sur la manière dont les institutions européennes traitent les questions sociales et d'emploi. En complément, il est tout aussi important de mener une " méta-analyse " de leurs propositions. En s'appuyant sur la notion polysémique et ambigüe de " flexicurité " , présentée dans le discours politique comme une réponse aux nouveaux défis posés par l'emploi, cet article souligne les nouvelles manières d'aborder la question sociale proposées par les institutions européennes.
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Social Policy & Administration
