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This chapter analyses how the interaction between government partisanship and unemployment vulnerability affect the politics of active labour market policies (ALMPs) in Spain, the Netherlands, and the UK. The analysis of the Spanish case shows that government partisanship does not affect ALMPs. Social democratic governments in Spain have not promoted higher levels of ALMPs compared with conservative ones. Developments in the Netherlands are remarkably similar to those in Spain. The analysis of the UK case shows a clear temporal division. During the 1970s and 1980s, government partisanship did not affect a general disinterest in ALMPs. Employers did not want them, unions had incentives not to pay too much attention to them, and Conservative and Labour governments had no reason to favour them. High levels of insider protection made the Labour Party indifferent to ALMPs until the arrival of Margaret Thatcher. The decrease in insider protection promoted by the conservative governments of Thatcher and Major facilitated a new interest in ALMPs by insiders and the emergence of Blair's Third Way (defined as a Labour strategy with employment promotion as a preeminent goal).

This chapter examines how the interaction between government partisanship and corporatism affects social policy in Spain, the Netherlands, and the UK. It is shown that in a noncorporatist country such as Spain, the policies of the PSOE governments lacked a clear social dimension. ALMPs were considered secondary to other political objectives (such as inflation reduction or labour market flexibilization). In the Netherlands, corporatism promoted much higher levels of social policy, but, as in Spain, the influence of government partisanship was not obvious. The UK case shows that before the 1980s, both parties had engaged in expansive welfare measures. The electoral victory of Margaret Thatcher signaled the beginning of a period in which governments of both parties would limit social policy. It is shown that the Conservative governments of Thatcher and Major pursued policies directed to the retrenchment of the welfare state.

This chapter focuses on those employment measures commonly known as active labour market policies (ALMPs). It starts by providing a comparative historical analysis of ALMPs, suggesting that these measures effectively date back to the early 20th century. However, in recent years their content has been altered to encompass a higher proportion of supply-side measures, typically accompanied by more stringent qualifying criteria for the receipt of unemployment benefits. ALMPs have now become an effective mechanism for the control of the labour market. In light of these trends, the chapter questions the compatibility of some of the current forms of ALMPs with some notions of ‘right to work’ underpinned by human rights and decent work concerns.

The chapter authors Jose Luis Arco-Tirado, Francisco D. Fernández-Martín, and Radha Jagannathan take an empirical perspective to the chronically high youth unemployment in Spain and provide details on its correlates. After a review of comparative unemployment statistics for youth in Spain and in the EU, the chapter presents a historical record of the reforms Spain implemented in its education and vocational systems and whether these reforms have been effective. It then undertakes a review of the active labor market policies aimed at skills activation and skills matching that Spain implemented immediately following the great recession under the Youth Guarantee program, and provides a discussion on whether these efforts have been productive. The chapter concludes with (a) a comparison of the existing VET system with the German apprenticeship model and the barriers that need to be overcome before the latter can fully be transplanted in Spain, and (b) some final thoughts on the paradoxical nature of the data on entrepreneurship gleaned from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor (GEM).

This chapter is authored by Michael J. Camasso, Guillaume Moissonnier and Radha Jagannathan, and begins with a description of some of the policy measures that France has attempted in order to blunt the growth of youth unemployment, with specific reference to their VET system. It is argued that the nearly uniform disdain attached to VET by French parents, youth and employers can be explained by dirigisme or the primacy of the role of the state over that of industry, and Etatisme, or state control over the citizens. The chapter goes on to discuss the French preference for intellectual or symbolic capital over market generated profits, the former driven by academic qualifications and the latter, by routine labor market engagement. The foundations of this intellectual superiority and its maintenance are traced to the unique system of Grandes Écoles that spawns future “state nobility” equipped to wield enormous power and control over the economy and other affairs of the state. By interweaving historical and comparative information on the functioning of the French, American and German labor markets, the authors provide insight into the French reverence for the Grandes Écoles system and under-valuation of VET.

Written by Radha Jagannathan and Ioanna Tsoulou, this chapter begins with a discussion of the economic turmoil Greece has experienced in recent history and takes us through the debt crisis, the austerity measures that followed, and the cash-for-reform deal with the EU. Focusing principally on the supply side and on the Greek society’s tendency for over-educating its young, the chapter describes the rise of the precariat as a direct consequence of the labor market’s inability to absorb the high-educated/high skilled labor, and focuses attention on the prevailing norms of clientelism, nepotism and non-meritocracy that have earned Greece a rather dubious distinction as one of the most corrupt western democracies. After an overview of the Greek education system and the rather poor reputation of its VET, the chapter provides a comparative discussion of the active labor market policies in Greece and Portugal and why similar reforms in the two countries led to divergent results. The chapter explores Greece’s capacity to adopt an entrepreneurship pathway to curbing youth unemployment and presents results from a survey of 30 Greek youth who opined on the issues of youth labor market.

This chapter explains the development of education, the labour market, and welfare in the Czech Republic during the period 1990–2006. After 1989, stratification of the education system became more pronounced. The upper-secondary system retained it structure. However, in compulsory education, long academic programmes appeared, schools received more autonomy, and in order to attract students, schools offered classrooms with specialised curricula. Structural changes in the Czech economy are indicated by the redistribution of employment among economic sectors. Employment shares in industry as well as in agriculture have decreased to shares comparable to the Western European Union (EU). Labour force participation rates dropped during the transition period and unemployment rates increased. During the early transition period, active labour market policies (ALMPs) in the Czech Republic were focused on the subsidisation of private sector job creation and public works, and not towards activation schemes. Only in 2005 were measures enacted to assist working people.

The focus in this chapter is on the consequences of employers’ decisions and on labor market institutions that create flexible, rigid, or segmented labor markets. The authors profile how each of the focal countries maintains culturally distinctive production functions and how these approaches to the creation of goods and services impact employment and overall economic performance. The importance of a labor market designed around the production of value-added product for export is highlighted, as is the pressure it places on renewal of knowledge and skill sets and flexible labor markets. Failures of the labor market in the forms of unemployment, underemployment, and low labor force participation have resulted in a variety of government interventions or active labor market policies. The authors examine the effectiveness of a number of these policies, including subsidies paid to employees, minimum wages, and employment subsidies to private businesses and public sector jobs.

For many decades it seemed that the Swedish model was immune to change. Welfare scholars saw in Sweden a paragon of an equal society based on a generous welfare state that had withstood the pressures of globalisation. While it is true that some welfare institutions are still intact, that is no longer the case in labour market policy. This cannot be explained by fiscal austerity imposed by the EU; rather it was the economic crisis in the early 1990s that first set reforms in motion. This chapter traces labour market reforms in Sweden over the past two decades. The pattern suggested here is one in which labour market outsiders have borne the brunt of reforms. This can be seen in the manner in which labour market flexibility was introduced, the fact that many of the unemployed now stand outside the social insurance system, in the declining value of social assistance benefits and perhaps most strikingly in the radical cuts to spending on active labour market policy.