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Government has promised that Britain will build a vocational route based on apprenticeship to match that found in the rest of Europe. However, judged on the first five years of Modern Apprenticeship, every important aspect of apprenticeship in Britain will need to be strengthened and improved if the government's aspirations are to be realised.'Beyond compulsory school age, we are determined to build a coherent and high-quality vocational education and training system that is the envy of the world.' [Opportunity and Skills in the Knowledge-Driven Economy, a final statement on the work of the National Skills Task Force from the Secretary of State for Education and Employment, 2001.]

English
Work First has emerged as the dominant active labour market policy strategy in Anglo-Saxon countries. In this article, we analyse recent labour market policy developments in Germany and the Netherlands. On the basis of general policy developments and four specific indicators (active labour market budgets, unemployment benefit systems, the definition of suitable work and the use of sanctions), we find supporting evidence for the hypothesis that Work First is gaining popularity in both Germany and the Netherlands. In Germany we find Work First at an early stage in terms of rules, and in the Netherlands we identify numerous experiments that are already under way in practice with respect to Work First variants.

Easing access to higher education (HE) for those engaging in lifelong learning has been a common policy objective across the European Union since the late 1990s. To reach this goal, the transition between vocational and academic routes must be simplified, but European countries are at different developmental stages. This article maps the development in Denmark, Finland, Germany and England using a case study approach deploying data triangulation from a national and institutional perspective. It explores the extent/commonality of structural factors for easing access for students engaging in lifelong learning. The cases are at widely different stages, but the following factors were considered essential in all countries for opening universities: the establishment of transition paths from secondary education and working life into HE and links between HE, businesses and adult education from a national perspective and the recognition of all forms of learning, the flexibilization of study formats and the design of a curriculum that suits all from an institutional perspective.

This article analyzes the phenomenon of participatory democracy and the impact of community norms on the process of democratization in the context of reforming the way of political organization of contemporary society. The importance of treating such a subject is revealed by the fact that a series of events from a complex, dynamic and contemporary reality facing contemporary society are drawn.
As a result of the investigation, the author concludes that the theoretical conceptions focused on participatory democracy provide support to the society in the conditions of transition to the democratic model, by the development of conditions of social affirmation, participation in the decision making process, development of policies that affect their life, especially directly and not through their representatives elected (as in the case of representative democracy). Active citizenship, generated by civic culture, and participatory democracy organize the principles of claiming and securing the rights of the poor and the excluded, the formation of efficient national systems that sufficiently reflect the particularities of contemporary processes.
Keywords: participatory democracy, society, transition, decision-making process, citizen

This study presents data from content analyses of the websites of all parties that stood in the 2009 European parliamentary elections in France, Germany, Great Britain and Poland. It cross-nationally examines the main functions of the websites, the adoption of Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 features, and the political and cultural factors that determine parties' online communication. The findings show that while the main website function varies across countries, Web 1.0 is still the dominant mode of campaigning. Moreover, offline inequalities within and between nations determine differences in parties' individual online strategies: specifically, major parties in states with long histories of democracy and EU membership lead the way and offer more interactive and innovative modes of campaigning. On the other hand, minor parties, particularly in Poland, remain in a more Web 1.0, information-heavy mode of communication. This supports the so-called normalization thesis on both the meso and the macro level.