Table of Contents

Table of Contents - 6[-]List of Boxes, Figures and Tables - 10[-]Abbreviations - 14[-]Acknowledgements - 20[-]I Introduction - 22[-]II Theoretical Approach - 36[-]Part I Origin and Crisis of European Labour Market Policy Regimes - 72[-] III Origin of European Labour Market Policy Regimesand the Manpower Revolution - 74[-] IV Labour Market Policy Regimes in Crisis: Divergence into Three Distinct Clusters - 106[-]Part II The Emergence of the Activation Paradigm - 150[-] V The OECD's Repeated Reassessments and the EU as aProliferator of New Ideas - 152[-] VI The Emergence of the Activation Paradigm: Analysing Institutional Hybridisation - 194[-] VII Explaining Transformative Change in Two Crucial Cases - 254[-] VIII Conclusion - 296[-]List of Interviews and Personal Conversations - 316[-]Notes - 322[-]List of Interviews and Personal Conversations - 340[-]Bibliography - 342[-]Index - 388

About the Author

J. Timo Weishaupt is Juniorprofessor for the Sociology of Welfare States, School of Social Sciences, University of Mannheim, Germany.[-]

Reviews

"A major contribution to the crowded but inconclusive literature on the activation of European labour market policies. Focusing on ideational reassessment by reflexive national actors, stimulated by international bodies such as the OECD and the EU, Timo Weishaupt compellingly shows how new elements inspired by Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon models have been combined in different ways with existing policies and institutions to produce a pervasive hybridization of European labor market regimes."[-]-- Jonathan Zeitlin, Professor of Public Policy and Governance, University of Amsterdam.[-][-]"This volume by Timo Weishaupt provides an impressive in-depth analysis stretching over five decades of policy development starting with the early advocacy of 'manpower policies' by the OECD to the recent paradigm shift towards activation in EU member states. The study's most important contribution lies in the historical perspective stressing the dynamic relation between conceptual discourse at the supranational level and national labour market reforms."[-]--Dr. Werner Eichhorst, Deputy Director of Labor Policy, IZA, Bonn.[-][-]"Timo Weishaupt's book offers valuable insights for students and researchers of comparative labour market policy. His extensive new research makes a convincing case that welfare regime theory is necessary but not sufficient in explaining how EU states have increasingly converged around an agenda defined by labour market deregulation, activation, and new public management in employment services."[-]Dr. Colin Lindsay, Senior Research Fellow at the Employment Research Institute, Edinburgh Napier University.[-][-]"This book provides an illuminating guide to a new and deeper understanding of the place of labour market policy reforms at both national and EU level. It is a rare combination of important empirical evidence and coherent theoretical thinking. The role played by cognitive and normative ideas is stressed in this innovative work which is bound to have a major impact on research and education."[-]--Henning J�rgensen, Professor at the Centre for Labour Market Research at Aalborg University, Denmark[-][-]"The book emphasizes the Swedish experience and OECD's role for the start of active labour market policy. In the main part of the book, the experiences of Denmark, Sweden, Ireland, the UK, Austria and Germany are compared. Timo Weishaupt's study contains much new information and insight and will be of value for all interested in the development and design of labour market policy."[-]--Eskil Wadensj�. Professor of Economics at the Swedish Institute for Social Research (SOFI), Stockholm University[-][-]"Weishaupt's book is successful in combining an analysis which explains both convergence and remaining differences in labour market policies by identifying a global paradigmatic shift partly lead by international organisations, important changes in national actors' ideas and coalitions, and transformative institutional evolution."[-]--Bruno Palier, CNRS researcher at Sciences Po in Paris (Centre d'�tudes europ�ennes) and scientific coordinator of the European Network of Excellence, Reconciling Work and Welfare in Europe (RECWOWE). He is the author of A Long Goodbye to Bismarck? (Amsterdam University Press, 2010)