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Labor Market Policy Decentralization in Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy - Dynamics and Reasons. ACES Working Papers No. 5, 2008

Lopez-Santana, Mariely and Büchs, Milena (2008) Labor Market Policy Decentralization in Germany, the United Kingdom and Italy - Dynamics and Reasons. ACES Working Papers No. 5, 2008. [Working Paper]

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    Abstract

    This article argues that welfare-to-work or activation policies, which have been adopted across a range of OECD countries during the last two decades, do not only have led to changes in the substance of the welfare state but also to transformations in its institutional configuration. This institutional transformation includes the spatial reconfiguration of the welfare state, which has given new roles to the supra-national, national, and sub-national levels of government as well as private actors in the management and creation of labor market policies. By bringing institutions into these debates, this article seeks to expand the literature on welfare-to-work and activation as to date authors working on this topic have said very little about the degree, types, and reasons for the spatial re-configuration of welfare-to-work policies across different states. To fill a gap in the literatures on changes in the welfare state and its territorial configuration in particular, we compare trends in the re-configuration of welfare-to-work policies in Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom. We find that there is a cross-national trend, when it comes to the institutional effects of the implementation of activation. These trends bear a tension between decentralization and centralization, as both central and sub-national levels of government have acquired new responsibilities to implement the activation paradigm.

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    Item Type: Working Paper
    Subjects for non-EU documents: Countries > Germany
    Countries > Italy
    Countries > U.K.
    EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > employment/labour market > labour/labor
    EU policies and themes > Policies & related activities > social policy > welfare state
    Subjects for EU documents: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Series and Periodicals: UNSPECIFIED
    EU Annual Reports: UNSPECIFIED
    Series: Series > American Consortium on European Union Studies > ACES Working Papers
    Depositing User: Phil Wilkin
    Official EU Document: No
    Language: English
    Date Deposited: 12 Jan 2015 13:04
    Number of Pages: 36
    Last Modified: 12 Jan 2015 13:16
    URI: http://aei.pitt.edu/id/eprint/59062

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