Unemployment and Activation Policies in Europe and the US

Edited by Henning Jørgensen, Professor and Research Manager, University College Northern Jutland, Denmark and Michaela Schulze, Professor of Political Science, University of Applied Labour Studies, Germany

• Contents1 Introduction: Unemployment and activation policies inEurope and the US 1Henning Jørgensen and Michaela Schulze2 Understandings of activation 29Henning Jørgensen and Michaela Schulze3 Crisis and political power relations: the development ofactivation policies in Austria before and after COVID 54Simon Theurl and Silvia Hofbauer4 The Danish case: activation in flux and fraught with tensions 76Henning Jørgensen and Mads Peter Klindt5 Activation in the universal welfare state: the case of Finland 100Minna van Gerven and Aleksander Heikkinen6 An activation U-turn? From pro-market employmentorientation to investment in human capital 121Werner Eichhorst and Michaela Schulze7 Activation policies in the Netherlands: the vicissitudes ofgeneral social policy and activating labour market policiessince the 1990s 145Romke van der Veen and Ferry Koster8 Norway: activation in the labouring society 160Ivan Harsløf and Ivar Lødemel9 Institutional fragmentation and low effectiveness in theSpanish activation turn 179Laureano Martinez and Begoña Cueto10 Switzerland: activation in a fragmented welfare state 203Giuliano Bonoli11 Between extension and emasculation: the UK activationregime in the 21st century 217Daniel Clegg12 Activation in the United States: low effort, fragmentedadministration, and poor performance 241Ian Greer13 Concluding remarks to a changing activation world 260Henning Jørgensen and Michaela Schulze

‘Focusing on Western Europe and the United States, and gathering scholars with an in-depth knowledge of the country cases at hand, this most informative and well-crafted book uses both historical and recent policy developments to map the ways in which activation varies across national social policy systems.’