Regulating the Risk of Unemployment

Regulating the Risk of Unemployment offers a systematic comparative analysis of the recent adaptation of European unemployment protection systems to increasingly post-industrial labor markets. These systems were mainly designed and institutionalized in predominantly industrial economies, characterized by relatively standardized employment relationships and stable career patterns, as well as plentiful employment opportunities even for those with low skills. Over the past two to three decades they have faced the challenge of an accelerating shift to a primarily service-based economy, accompanied by demands for greater flexibility in wages and terms and conditions in low-skill segments of the labor market as well as pressures to maximise labor force participation given the more limited potential for productivity-led growth. The book develops an original framework for analyzing adaptive reform in unemployment protection along three discrete dimensions of institutional change, which are termed benefit homogenization, risk re-categorization, and activation. This framework is then used to structure analysis of twenty years of unemployment protection reform in twelve European countries. In addition to mapping reforms along these dimensions, the country studies analyze the political and institutional factors that have shaped national patterns of adaptation. Complementary comparative analyses explore the effects of benefit reforms on the operation of the labor market, assess evolving patterns of working-age benefit dependency, and examine the changing role of active labor market policies in the regulation of the risk of unemployment.

Jochen Clasen is Professor of Comparative Social Policy in the School of Social and Political Science at University of Edinburgh. Professor Clasen is an expert in cross-national research on social security and unemployment policy, and has particular expertise in social policy comparisons between Germany and the UK. He has also published widely on methodological aspects of cross-national research, and his recent books include: Converging Worlds of Welfare (OUP 2011), Investigating Welfare State Change, and Reforming European Welfare States (OUP 2005).

Daniel Clegg is Lecturer in Social Policy in the School of Social and Political Science at University of Edinburgh. Prior to joining the University of Edinburgh, he held research and teaching posts at the University of Stirling and Oxford University, and Sciences Po in Paris. Clegg's research focuses on the comparative politics of unemployment and labor market policy in developed welfare states.