Socio-Economic Review Advance Access originally published online on May 21, 2008
Socio-Economic Review 2008 6(3):559-586; doi:10.1093/ser/mwn011
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The politics of employment-friendly welfare reforms in post-industrial economies
1 Institute for Political Science, University of Zurich, Switzerland
2 Sciences Po, Paris, France
Correspondence: silja.haeusermann{at}ipz.uzh.ch
The transition to post-industrialism has generated a range of new tensions between welfare arrangements and labour market performance, which confront today's welfare states with new challenges for employment-friendly recalibration, such as flexicurity, activation and work-care conciliation. Hence, the question of whether, how and to what extent current welfare states are able to adapt to the conditions and needs of post-industrial labour markets has become a major issue in recent welfare state research. This article identifies and discusses key debates in this literature on the politics of employment-friendly reforms. It first focuses on the general capacity for reform in mature welfare states and then discusses regime-specific reform politics, since post-industrialism confronts different welfare regimes with very different challenges. For each regime, the article proposes a range of research frontiers and open debates which we consider particularly relevant and fruitful avenues for future theorizing and research.
Key Words: institutional change • labor markets • public policy • welfare state