ABSTRACT

The discussion in Chapter Four suggested that liberal welfare regimes have made extensive changes to their labour market policies, particularly over the past fifteen years or so. They made these changes in response both to a perceived rise in global economic competition and a number of other associated factors primarily concerned with employers’ responses to service sector expansion, most obviously their demands for greater flexibility within the workforce. These policy shifts are not too surprising in view of the ‘disorganized’ character of welfare institutions in liberal regimes. A further issue, however, is the extent to which similar changes are occurring in those regimes in which welfare institutions are more closely coordinated, both in terms of popular subscription to existing arrangements and the ways in which institutional relationships, particularly those among the state and the social partners, work to perpetuate them. What follows examines current developments in labour market policies in social and continental regimes, beginning with the latter.