Leaving the Nordic Path? The Changing Role of Danish Trade Unions in the Welfare Reform Process

Jørgensen, Henning; Schulze, Michaela

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9515.2010.00765.x

Cited by 19 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 13 publications

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“…After a reform in 2006, there has been increased conditionality and surveillance, including arrangements to tighten the documentation of active job search. In 2010, the benefit period was lowered from 4 to 2 years and the work condition was extended from 26 to 52 weeks of employment (during the last 3 years for full‐time insured persons) (Goul Andersen, ; Jørgensen & Schulze, ). Additionally, municipalities have become financially responsible for payment of unemployment insurance.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards standby‐ability: Swedish and Danish activation policies in flux

Bengtsson

2014

Int J Soc Welfare

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The article analyses Scandinavian activation policies through the study of Swedish and Danish labour market policies since the early 1990s. Active labour market policies have been an important component in the social investment policies of the Scandinavian countries, defined as ‘an active corner’ in Europe. In this study of the trajectories of Swedish and Danish labour market policies during the last two decades, I examined official documents and analysed OECD data on public expenditures on labour market programmes. The analysis shows that institutional change of activation policies has increasingly developed towards an incentive‐strengthening, work‐first approach. The policy development, specifically in the case of Sweden, is here conceptualised as demands on ‘standby‐ability’, a specific policy configuration of stricter work incentives, contractualisation of citizenships rights, less generous unemployment benefits and less costly forms of activation.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Towards standby‐ability: Swedish and Danish activation policies in flux

Bengtsson

2014

Int J Soc Welfare

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“…For Greve (2011: 113), "profound changes have taken place and the Nordic model is no longer so distinct and special as it has been in a historical perspective," although this is seen to be consistent with continuing, possibly widening, differentiation across countries. For Jørgensen and Schulze (2011), there has been the erosion of the Danish corporatist model, especially with regard to the strength and presence of trade unions, and Jochem (2011) sees this as important across the Nordic countries in responding to unemployment, especially with the decline of centralized national bargaining, although active support to access to labour markets remains through education for lifelong skills. More generally, for Kvist and Greve (2010: 146) The Nordic welfare model is undergoing a fundamental transformation … Although Denmark still offers universal coverage in core welfare state areas, the increased use of occupational and fiscal welfare as well as changes in public schemes has gradually 28 See also Greve (2008b).…”

Section: … To Convergence Through Path Dependence To Crisismentioning

confidence: 99%

The Continuing Enigmas of Social Policy

Fine¹

2017

Towards Universal Health Care in Emerging Economies

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in EconStor may AbstractOne particular index of the systemic nature of the current crisis is the weaknesses of intellectual responses to the crisis and the inability, often self-confessed by orthodox thinkers and policy makers, to offer convincing or viable remedies. Unsurprisingly, this intellectual deficiency has primarily focused on the role of finance. But the intellectual weaknesses-especially as far as policy responses are concerned-run deeper and wider, covering (un)employment, industrial and housing policies, and so on. To a large extent, this reflects the debilitating influence of neoliberalism (looking at things in terms of a simple dichotomy between market and state, themselves simply conceived), the compromises with it, and the corresponding weaknesses of alternatives on offer prior to the crisis. These weak alternatives have swung between looking backwards to a Keynesian/interventionist renewal, and inventing alternative monikers for contemporary capitalism, such as post-Fordist or, more recently, the Cheshire-cat grinning knowledge economy.In this light, this paper examines critically what has been one of the most successful intellectual contributions to the neoliberal period, Esping-Andersen's Welfare Regimes Approach (WRA) to comparative social policy. The paper shows that the WRA has deep roots within the conditions of the post-war boom and, as a consequence, was already well past its "use by date" when it emerged in the 1990s, let alone over the subsequent two decades of neoliberalism that have been underpinned by financialization. A close examination of the literature on the WRA shows how it has suffered from being unable to account for the differences between countries and programmes and has neglected both the changing conditions associated with neoliberalism and the causal factors underpinning it, and the closer determination of social policies themselves. The paper offers similar commentary on other approaches to social policy, such as appeal to convergence, divergence or path dependence. To some degree, the study of social policy has become tired, having been used to addressing yet one more crisis of the welfare state as if all that is involved is another round of responses to neoliberal antipathy or straitened economic circumstances.With such analysis as critical point of departure-together with specification of financialization, its relationship to neoliberalism and their variegated influences over social ...

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“…111 Over the course of ten years, Venstre successfully and sequentially played the limits of the Danish welfare capitalist imaginary by publically defending flexicurity, while at the same time redirecting active labor market policy from a focus on strengthening "human capital" toward a heavily monitored "work first" approach, leveling differences between "earned" unemployment insurance benefits and more basic means-tested social assistance, reducing the influence of the social partners in both national policymaking and in the local administration of active labor market policy, and introducing market incentives in public service delivery. 112 Building on the arguments made by center-left Social Democrats during the 1990s about the economic and social needs to further strengthen employment policy's active elements, the center-right coalition rationalized drift in the generosity and cuts in the length of income replacement and training benefits by stressing that the Nordic Model was only sustainable if it increased labor supply and was governed in a fiscally responsible manner. More broadly, by emphasizing the need to balance flexibility and security, the government had finally found a "backdoor" to break into the normative hold of social democratic ideas in the population.…”

Section: If You Can't Beat Them Join Them: Redefining the Public Intmentioning

confidence: 99%

Playing Normative Legacies

Schulze-Cleven

Weishaupt

2015

Politics & Society

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Europe's affluent democracies adopted different policy strategies to buffer their labor markets from the effects of the worldwide recession that followed the financial crisis in 2007. This article offers a sociologically anchored historical institutionalist explanation to account for this divergence. Reviewing the politics of employment policymaking before, during, and after the crisis in the United Kingdom, Germany, and Denmark, the article traces partisan actors' tactics of maneuvering within the constraints of institutionally embedded mass preferences to legitimate their policies and improve their electoral performance. The analysis moves beyond contemporary treatments of path-dependent institutional evolution in two important ways. Rather than focusing on how arrangements at the work-welfare nexus provide actors with particular functional benefits and differential power resources, it examines institutions' ideational effects on the construction of electorates' interests. Moreover, it illuminates partisan politicians' room for strategic agency, breaking with interpretations that view government responses as the product of particular producer group coalitions.

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Leaving the Nordic Path? The Changing Role of Danish Trade Unions in the Welfare Reform Process

Cited by 19 publications

References 13 publications

Towards standby‐ability: Swedish and Danish activation policies in flux

Towards standby‐ability: Swedish and Danish activation policies in flux

The Continuing Enigmas of Social Policy

Playing Normative Legacies

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