ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a cross-national analysis of the development of social rights and obligations in unemployment insurance in several European countries during the 1990s. It analyzes changing rights and obligations in unemployment insurance. The chapter focuses on the configuration of rights and obligations and in this way identifies emerging models of unemployment insurance. All the Nordic countries and the United Kingdom had accessible unemployment insurance schemes throughout the 1990s just as it was more difficult in Germany and the Netherlands. Unemployment insurance will be an important part of modern welfare states, but unemployment amelioration is a more ambitious agenda that points towards a more inclusive form of citizenship, of balancing both passive and active rights with obligations. The overall development in unemployment insurance may on the background be characterized by some cross-national commonalities in policy changes across countries belonging to different models, and some convergence between countries having the same underlying ideology in social policy.
