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

Contents
1 Introduction: Unemployment and activation policies in
Europe and the US 1
Henning Jørgensen and Michaela Schulze
2 Understandings of activation 29
Henning Jørgensen and Michaela Schulze
3 Crisis and political power relations: the development of
activation policies in Austria before and after COVID 54
Simon Theurl and Silvia Hofbauer
4 The Danish case: activation in flux and fraught with tensions 76
Henning Jørgensen and Mads Peter Klindt
5 Activation in the universal welfare state: the case of Finland 100
Minna van Gerven and Aleksander Heikkinen
6 An activation U-turn? From pro-market employment
orientation to investment in human capital 121
Werner Eichhorst and Michaela Schulze
7 Activation policies in the Netherlands: the vicissitudes of
general social policy and activating labour market policies
since the 1990s 145
Romke van der Veen and Ferry Koster
8 Norway: activation in the labouring society 160
Ivan Harsløf and Ivar Lødemel
9 Institutional fragmentation and low effectiveness in the
Spanish activation turn 179
Laureano Martinez and Begoña Cueto
10 Switzerland: activation in a fragmented welfare state 203
Giuliano Bonoli
11 Between extension and emasculation: the UK activation
regime in the 21st century 217
Daniel Clegg
12 Activation in the United States: low effort, fragmented
administration, and poor performance 241
Ian Greer
13 Concluding remarks to a changing activation world 260
Henning Jørgensen and Michaela Schulze