Why has the formation of social policy and labor law by the European Union proven so difficult over the last two decades? What has been happening in the social and employment fields in the EU member states during this period? These two questions are central for anyone researching and teaching in the fields of welfare state studies and European integration, and the three books under review each provide their own unique contributions.
Perhaps the most original and sophisticated contribution is Jochen Clasen and Daniel Clegg's edited volume Regulating the Risk of Unemployment. The topic of reform and the convergence/divergence of European welfare states toward a neoliberal model has spawned an extensive body of academic literature. However, understanding developments and trends across a large number of country case studies in policy areas other than pensions can be difficult. Clasen and Clegg address this void for the area of unemployment benefit systems.
The editors begin their analysis with the argument that postwar unemployment benefit systems should be understood as occupationally defined schemes linked to industrial employment, which ensured that workers were protected against the risks of cyclical and frictional unemployment. By the early 1980s, this institutionalized arrangement for regulating the risk of unemployment had unraveled as the male breadwinner model of industrial employment declined, the service sector expanded, and a more heterogeneous form of employment took hold (part-time, fixed-term contracts). Across Europe, governments reduced unemployment benefits, provided exit strategies from the labor market (such as early retirement), or intervened to provide active labor market policies (ALMPs), but by the early 1990s, this piecemeal strategy had reached its limits. The authors hypothesize that since then, unemployment policy across Europe has converged via a triple integration process of benefit homogenization: fewer tiers of unemployment protection and the emergence of a dominant general tier; risk recategorization with diminishing differences in entitlement and conditionality between unemployment and other benefit schemes, and the possible creation of a single-benefit scheme; and activation policies whereby benefits are becoming conditional upon supported job search for recipients. Part I of the volume includes contributions that test the hypotheses in 12 country case studies (UK, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Italy, Spain, Denmark, Sweden, Hungary, and the Czech Republic).
The second part of the volume addresses the more thematic elements of the research across the national case studies, including the transition rate of the unemployed and the inactive into work (Werner Eichhorst and colleagues), the changing composition of working-age benefit recipients and the methodological problems associated with using national claimant data in research (Johan J. De Deken and Clasen), and, finally, the relationship between the broader purpose of ALMPs and economic context (Giuliano Bonoli). The volume finds substantial evidence to argue that the UK, the Netherlands, Germany, Denmark and Belgium provide the clearest examples of moving toward the triple integration process, while France, Sweden, and Italy display some modest shifts. Switzerland, Spain, Hungary, and the Czech Republic have experienced the least movement in their unemployment systems, thus reminding the reader that while there has been significant convergence across Western welfare states over the last two decades, divergence persists.
Continuing with the broader theme of divergence and convergence is Social Policy in the Smaller European Union States, edited by Gary B. Cohen and his colleagues. The small Western European states have long been considered unique during the postwar period in that compared to larger European countries, they have always been more dependent for economic growth on their integration within the global economy. This argument was originally made in Peter J. Katzenstein's Small States in World Markets: Industrial Policy in Europe (1985). But how similar are Europe's small states in social policy in an age of globalization and Europeanization, especially given that major recent new ideas on welfare reform have normally come from such small states who are able to “enact major policy changes driven by central policy makers much more rapidly” than the larger bureaucracies of Germany, France, and the UK (p. 8)? For these editors, there have been two dominant social policy trajectories over the last 20 years: the social investment strategy of public spending that supports individuals in entering and succeeding in the private sector, and the market liberalization of public services in areas such as health care.
Section I of the volume has four chapters that analyze the introduction of social investment strategies such as investment in education, ALMPs, and child-care and maternity policies. Section II examines the important role of political coalitions in either facilitating or blocking change toward social policy ideas. The three chapters in the section focus on health-care reform, social protection, and collective bargaining. The third section examines how preexisting policy institutions and historical legacies constrained the kinds of reforms that could emerge; it focuses on health care, higher education, and consumer protection and risk perceptions.
The editors argue that significant divergence remains across social policy areas among the small Western European states. This can be accounted for when there has been a shared domestic narrative about the challenges and direction that reform should take. Robert Henry Cox writes that “[i]n this environment, a few clever ideas can serve as ‘coordination points’ for policy reform” (p. 261), which should be understood as a location where political actors share similar understandings of policy problems and challenges, embrace fairly similar values and priorities, and are able to find political space to bridge the other differences that separate them. The editors conclude that the EU has had little effect on the spreading of ideas about welfare reform, given that the EU's constitutional competence is weak and that it has adopted soft policy instruments, such as the Open Method of Coordination, to encourage member states to adopt their own reforms.
What has been driving the process of welfare reform and convergence across Europe? Why has the EU failed in its various attempts to construct a European social model at the transnational level? One answer to these two questions is provided by Daniel V. Preece's monograph, which provides an original contribution to both the literature that seeks to explain the lack of integration within EU social policy and labor law and that which provides a neoGramscian perspective on European integration. In Dismantling Social Europe, Preece argues that while the EU has been captured by a neoliberal hegemonic bloc that has pushed forward market integration, neosocialists, on the other hand—that is, transnational actors aiming to integrate the welfare states of its members—have had their political agenda essentially hijacked by the neoliberal “market-making” social bloc. The case of the European Employment Strategy (EES) serves to illustrate this point. When it was launched in 1997, it represented a high point for the neosocialist bloc as its aim was to “promote a skilled, trained and adaptable workforce and labour markets responsive to economic change” (Treaty establishing the European Community [TEC], Art. 125). But following a five-year review in 2003, the EU was essentially captured by the neoliberal bloc and became firmly embedded within its policy discourse on competitiveness. The hegemonic bloc has been able to utilize the concept of “flexicurity” to pressure member states into implementing more neoliberal social policies.
To evaluate the impact of European integration on employment and social policy in the member states, the book analyzes the experiences of Ireland and Germany—two very different EU member states with respect to their varieties of capitalism and welfare states. The author finds that in parallel to the rising influence of neoliberal discourse at the European level, European integration has had a similar effect on both countries that have been reconfigured by a governing consensus of embedded neoliberalism. Why have actors from the different EU welfare states been relatively powerless to resist the forces of neoliberalism? Preece (pp. 159–63) provides a unique answer to this question. While welfare policies remain the responsibility of member states within the EU, the enhanced level of coordination demanded in the Treaty means that national governments are no longer able to determine their social policies in isolation. This new institutional arrangement has allowed neoliberal social forces to take advantage of the often-unclear institutional configuration and to establish a hegemonic order that reflects their ideals and interests.
A further issue relates to the European social dialogue that positions employers and trade unions as privileged actors in both bipartite and tripartite negotiations. The privileged position of the European Trade Union Confederation inadvertently excludes more radical trade unions, social movements, and other civil society organizations within debates over the future of EU economic governance. The strategic selectivity of the EU state constrains the access of subordinate forces, and this weakens the connections between different counterhegemonic groups, thereby hindering their ability to make progress.
Each of the reviewed books provides its own perspective on reform within European employment and social policy, as well as the impact of European integration. In their own manner, they enrich the debate and are appropriate for postgraduate classes on the subject. European welfare states have changed dramatically in the postwar period, and Clasen's and Clegg's contribution succinctly explains the overall trend of a shift from state responsibility of employment to an ever-present emphasis on “individual responsibility” within policy. Perhaps the main contribution of Cohen and his coeditors is to further highlight this development, as well as the introduction of market-based practices into certain areas of welfare policy. Finally, Preece provides his own perspective on the broader process of European integration and why traditional postwar conceptions of welfare policy have changed beyond recognition. But the analysis of convergence and the marketization of employment and social policy, as well as its relationship to the process of European integration, continues to sidestep the real issue at the heart of this debate—why all of this matters.
Most people would agree that personal responsibility is important, but the three books provide a clear indication that over the last two decades, the policy areas of employment and social policy have seen the balance between individual responsibility and state responsibility dramatically shift in favor of the former. But what are the consequences of this for society as a whole? And what is the likely impact on the future sustainability of employment and social policy? These are huge questions that cannot be answered within the limits of this review, and furthermore, they cannot be answered without the impressive empirical research conducted within all three books. But in this debate, the other side of the coin merits attention and future research in the field should focus on both sides.
On the prominence of individual responsibility in the policy fields, I side with Karl Polanyi and his argument that the marketization of society can only have a negative effect. To varying degrees, postwar Western European welfare states decommodified labor, but its current recommodification has strong parallels with Polanyi's observations about nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century Britain. The concern with this new phase of commodification is that eventual societal resistance, combined with the continued contradictory expansion of the market, will create economic crisis very similar to the current Eurozone crisis. In other words, such policies have the potential to destabilize the political and economic world in which we live and could have catastrophic consequences.
For those who do not buy into such grand theory and an apocalyptic vision of the consequences of the commodification of society, this does not mean that the debate is less important. How does the dominance of individualism and personal responsibility in employment and social policy affect long-term perceptions of the function and purpose of a welfare state? Do they have the potential to further erode support for collective responsibility in welfare policy? In this view, the shift in emphasis in employment and social policy has the potential to generate support for further retrenchment.
The reader may disagree with my answers to some of the questions raised from a broader understanding of the topic. But my point here is to encourage much-needed discussion within the field. Hopefully, the points made in this review, combined with the contents of the three books, will go some way toward initiating this debate.
