The Political Economy of Collective Skill Formation

Marius R. Busemeyer is a Professor of Political Science and head of an Emmy Noether research group at the University of Konstanz. Prior to this, he was a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. His research focuses on the comparative political economy of education regimes and welfare states, public spending, individual social policy preferences, and theories of institutional change. Christine Trampusch is Professor of International Comparative Political Economy and Economic Sociology at the University of Cologne. Prior to this, she was Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Berne. Her research centers on the study of the origins and changes of welfare states, industrial relations, and skill formation systems, in a historical and comparative perspective.

• FOREWORD ; Foreword ; INTRODUCTION ; 1. Introduction: The Comparative Political Economy of Collective Skill Formation ; SECTION I: COUNTRY STUDIES ; 2. Vocational Training and the Origins of Coordination: Specific Skills and the Politics of Collective Action ; 3. Institutional Change in German Vocational Training: From Collectivism towards Segmentalism ; 4. The Development of the Vocational Training System in the Netherlands ; 5. Educational Policy Actors as Stakeholders in the Development of the Collective Skills System: The Case of Switzerland ; 6. Austrian Corporatism and Institutional Change in the Relationship between Apprenticeship Training and School-Based VET ; 7. The Social Partners and the Social Democratic Party in the Continuation of a Collective Skill System in Denmark ; SECTION II: CROSSCUTTING TOPICS AND CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES ; 8. Collective Skill Systems, Wage Bargaining, and Labor Market Stratification ; 9. The Links between Vocational Training and Higher Education in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany ; 10. Gendered Consequences of Vocational Training ; 11. Europeanization and the Varying Responses in Collective Skill Systems ; CONCLUSION ; 12. Skills and Politics: General and Specific

This volume is the major publication in the vocational training literature since Thelen's seminal How Institutions Evolve. Studies of the main 'collective actor' systems - Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, and the Netherlands - bring the reader right up-to-date while also showing the historical evolution of the systems. In a most impressive introductory chapter, Busemeyer and Trampusch build an analytic political economic model to account for the different patterns of skill formation systems in the advanced world. And in sparkling country and comparative chapters (including by Iversen, Martin, Streeck, and Thelen) the book integrates a depth of empirical knowledge with sophisticated modern political economy. This book is a formidable achievement.