ABSTRACT
In the early 1990s, facing high unemployment, low growth, a public sector nearly immobilized in the face of economic decline, and a long-smoldering revolt against an apparently incapacitated state, Denmark reconfigured its welfare state to create a system called flexicurity. The essential idea of flexicurity—conveyed by the name—is to combine high flexibility in labor markets with high levels of security for workers. The cumulative effect of flexicurity for individuals, moreover, is to encourage an economy-wide shift in favor of more skilled jobs, as well as innovative firms that can make use of them. The low-resolution description of flexicurity focuses on design principles rather than specific policies and corresponding institutions. Flexicurity is about lifelong learning in a public policy system that does not deny personal responsibility, but rather reconceptualizes the conventional notion that we are victims of fate until 18 or 21, and nearly self-sufficient thereafter.
