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This article discusses the multi-faceted and changing role played by trade unions in providing unemployment benefits in Sweden, a country using the so-called Ghent system. As an important institutional feature explaining the high rate of unionisation in the Nordics, the system has been much debated. This article provides a comprehensive account of the retrenchment of the state unemployment benefit system (UBS) and the development of occupational and private UBS pillars providing complementary protection. It also introduces an ongoing reform discussion where the social partners are proposed to govern the unemployment insurance system via collective agreements, while retaining the union-linked insurance funds. The core institutional feature of the Ghent system – voluntary membership of a union-linked insurance fund – is turning out to be highly resilient despite frequent attempts to weaken the union power stemming from it. However, the system’s role in providing unemployment protection has changed due to its development into a multi-pillar structure, meaning that its future prospects are uncertain.

The Brussels-based civil society organizations (CSOs) have been conceived by the EU to act as a bridge between the bureaucratic elites and the citizens of Europe. The institutionalized presence of the major EU-based CSOs has, however, called their legitimacy into question, as exemplified by notions such as ‘revolving doors’ implying homogeneous social, educational, and professional backgrounds shared by both EU officials and CSO leaders. This article therefore asks the following questions: To what extent do the leaders of EU-based CSOs merely reproduce the types of capital that mirror those of the political elites in the so-called ‘Brussels bubble’? To what extent do the CSO leaders bring in other sets of capital and forms of recognition that are independent of the Brussels game? How can we explain differences in the salience of EU capital found across policy areas, types of leadership positions, and types of organizations? Empirically, this article qualitatively analyzes the career trajectories of 17 leaders of EU-based peak CSOs that are active in social and environmental policy areas. Despite the highly integrated and institutionalized characteristics shared by all organizations, we find diversity in the composition of the leaders in terms of the extent to which their career trajectories are embedded in the EU arena.

The need to develop synergetic policy frameworks, ideas, and instruments to tackle the double challenge of climate emergency and social inequality has increasingly gained momentum over the past few years and is reflected in the increasing number of academic contributions. The iconic model of a 'safe and just space for humanity' (Raworth, 2017) considers both planetary and social boundaries. Economy and society develop within a doughnut-shaped space, where resource use is below the level of critical planetary boundaries but above the sufficiency level required to meet people's basic needs. Building on this, Fanning et al. (2020) discuss the complex processes through which patterns of material and resource extraction within this space result in different ecological and social outcomes. The concept of 'sustainable welfare' (Koch and Mont, 2016) addresses the intersection of environmental and social policies. This concept has resulted in critical assessments of the environmental consequences of existing welfare systems and suggestions of concrete eco-social policies. If integrated into a holistic policy framework, these have the potential of initiating a virtuous policy cycle (Hirvilammi, 2020) necessary to re-embed Western production and consumption patterns within planetary limits.We argue that theoretical terms such as sustainable welfare need to be complemented by bottom-up measures of operationalization. This is not only necessary because the frames and concepts listed above leave plenty of leeway for concrete policy development and implementation at the local, regional, and national levels, but also because of the pressing need for citizen mobilization to achieve systematic changes of national states and multi-national governance structures (Koch, 2020a; Pirgmaier and Steinberger, 2019). In many cases, national states and multi-national governance structures have

The Swedish public unemployment insurance program is characterized by its governance structure involving union-linked insurance funds, famously known as the Ghent system. This paper argues that the unions’ strongly entrenched interest in the provision of unemployment benefits has continued to shape the establishment and expansion of complementary benefits for the unemployed in multiple forms, including bilateral Employment Transition Agreements between employers’ organizations and unions (occupational pillar) and privately provided complementary income insurance benefits mediated by unions (private pillar). The paper accounts for this multi-pillarization process of the Swedish unemployment benefit provision system and how the unions’ involvement has come to take multiple forms. The paper also discusses distributive implication of this union-led development of the complementary pillars, which reinforces the differences in risk protection between different occupational groups and sectors.