The last two decades have seen an increasing focus on the activation of individuals receiving welfare benefits. This has entailed an attempt to transform employment assistance and social security systems to make them more employment‐friendly through the development of explicit linkages between social protection policies, labour market participation and labour market programs.At the same time there has been a growing interest in the concept of social inclusion, and social inclusion has been a commonly stated goal of activation programs. However, despite some synergies between these two approaches, in other respects it is not clear that they are always compatible.This paper explores the extent to which activation programs are central to the social inclusion approach and the similarities and differences between these approaches. It then briefly examines the evidence regarding the ability of activation programs to enhance social inclusion.
Active employment strategies raise complex questions and considerations for trade unions. This is especially true for activation. If unions oppose activation it will be hard for them to play a relevant role in the contemporary debate. If they agree with current activation policies they will share responsibility for the risks attached to them. This article tries to find a way out of this dilemma. It explores the central issue of what constitutes an adequate stance for trade unions with regard to activation, in a situation where full employment is not a realistic aim. A possible way out of the dilemma is formulated from two perspectives. The first is a reciprocal, client-oriented approach to benefit claimants elaborated in terms of rights and duties that are defendable from a trade union point of view. The second is a broader concept of social participation, in which participation is not limited to paid employment on the regular labour market. Formulating these ideas only makes sense if the unions are also prepared and able to back them up with union power. The final section of the article addresses the question of how unions can back up their position on activation with union power.
This paper presents new information on activity-related eligibility criteria for unemployment and related benefits in OECD and EU countries in 2017, comparing the strictness of "demanding" elements built into unemployment benefits across countries and over time. Eligibility criteria for unemployment benefits determine what claimants need to do to successfully claim benefits initially or to continue receiving them. Benefit systems feature specific rules that define the type of job offers that claimants need to accept, requirements for reporting on the outcomes of independent job-search efforts, obligations to participate in active labour market programmes, as well as sanctions for failing to meet these requirements. Such rules aim to strengthen incentives to look for, prepare for, and accept employment. They may also be used as a targeting device to reduce demands on benefit systems, and on associated employment services. While this may serve to limit support to genuine jobseekers, strict requirements can also exclude some intended recipients from financial and re-employment support, e.g., by discouraging them from applying. This paper presents detailed information on policy rules in 2017, summarises them into an overall policy indicator of eligibility strictness, and gauges recent policy trends by documenting changes in the strictness measures. A novelty is the inclusion of lower-tier unemployment or social assistance benefits in the compilation of policy rules. Results document a large number of reforms enacted after the Great Recession and suggest a slight convergence of policy rules across countries even though overall measures of the strictness of activity-related eligibility criteria have remained broadly unchanged during the recent past. In countries with multiple layers of support for the unemployed, availability requirements tend to be more demanding for lower-tier assistance benefits, while sanction rules tend to be more stringent for first-tier programmes.
PurposeThis paper evaluates why activation programmes are still an important and core component of most European countries' social‐ and labour market policies when it has become increasingly clear that the employment effects are most often either unknown or very small.Design/methodology/approachTo answer this issue, an in‐depth investigation of the evolution of activation programmes in the specific national context of Denmark is investigated.FindingsCharting in detail the evolution of labour market activation (or workfare) programmes in Denmark, this paper displays the ongoing intensification of activation policies and ways in which this has reduced the living standards of marginalised groups and explains this to be the result of a power block that has a wider intent of disciplining the whole workforce, not least by encouraging more people to work harder and for longer hours, and rarely with overtime compensation.Research limitations/implicationsThis paper explains the reasons for the continuing use of labour market insertion programmes when there is a lack of evidence that they are effective in achieving their goal of inserting people into employment.Originality/valueThis paper uses the notion of a power block to understand the reasons for advanced economies persisting with labour market activation programmes.
AbstractVoting Advice Applications (VAAs) have proliferated in the last decade as part of electoral campaigns in Europe. Several studies have linked the usage of the applications to an increase in voting intention, yet the literature on the factors that make people more likely to be influenced by VAAs is not really developed. This paper tries to contribute to this literature by addressing two key questions: first, how non-institutional forms of political participation influence abstentionism among VAA users and second, how VAA encourages voting intention among these politically engaged abstentionists (activation effect). We first examine (a) whether being engaged in non-institutional forms of participation increases the likelihood of a VAA user declaring him/herself to be a voter and (b) whether being engaged in non-institutional forms of political participation has an effect on the probability of becoming a "voter" after filling in the VAA questionnaire. Our results suggest that the VAA "activation effect" nexus exists and it affects a significant percentage of abstentionist. Those users that have participated in non-institutional forms of participation – such as demonstrations or online petitions – are more likely to declare being voters before filling in the VAA. Among the abstentionists, once they answered the set of 30 key questions, a considerable percent (between 14 and 22 percent depending on the threshold used) declared to have the intention to vote (activation effect). The prevailing profile of the activated user is a young man with tertiary education. The motivational reason for voting a party also matter in increasing the probability that an "activation effect" happens. The competency of the party, its ideology, the candidate presented by the party and the users' self-interest are also good predictors of the "activation effect."
Since the beginning of the modern era, the social policy of European countries has merged the trends of assistance and control. The concept of active social policy (ASP), developed in Europe at the turn of 20th, is another attempt to link the idea of assistance and mobilization of the unemployed and economically inactive. It consists in programme-based linking of activation methodology with the use of conditional support instruments (characterising the mobilisation and control order) with the assumptions of social inclusion (referring to social solidarity and empowerment of beneficiaries coming from the assistance order). The paper presents various ways of implementing this concept at the social practice level. Differences are visible at three levels of the concept's implementation: the formatting of legal and institutional support tools, the application of activation service management techniques s and the practice of frontline work with the customers the customers; moreover, legitimisation processes, consisting in attributing specific social meanings and functions to activation, proceed in different ways. It might be stated that activation services "overgrow with" different organisational cultures. The analysis of these cultures reveals that despite the care taken in the programming phase of activation policies to combine coherently the support and mobilisation items, in the implementation phase one or another historically established approaches to the people socially marginalised and excluded usually prevails. Bearing this in mind, the paper presents the original proposal for a bipolar typology of activation policies, services and frontline work practices, distinguishing two activation modes: (1) the empowerment mode, corresponding to the assistance order, and (2) the underclass management mode, corresponding to the mobilisation-control order. These are two fundamentally different and at the same time internally coherent Max Weber's ideal types, i.e. multidimensional analytical tools covering all activation levels and aspects. They provide a continuum on which activation policies of individual countries (macro level of activation approach), specific models of organisation and management of activation services (mezzo level) and specific frontline work practices (micro level) can be positioned according to the criterion of proximity/distance from either model extreme.
This article focuses on young unemployed people in Sweden involved in two activation measures. Using the analytical framework of governmentality, it analyses how the participants perceive and value activation measures as government-driven interventions aimed at bringing young people into the labour market based on a neoliberal discourse of the welfare state. The article highlights that the welfare system tries to not only promote behavioural changes, but also change the way people think. At the centre of the study are the people-changing technologies embedded in the Swedish norms of a strong work ethic. The analysis underlines how these technologies are internalised and even become a part of the participant's own free will.
PurposeThe first part of the paper aimed to interpret the changes addressed by the concepts of governance and activation in their context, in order to grasp the larger picture of the societal transformation underlying them: the starting point is the assumption that new modes of governance in activation policies are a fruitful entry point for effectively understanding deep waves of change of contemporary society. The second part aims to briefly introduce the papers included in this issue.Design/methodology/approachThe paper insists on a perspective according to which there are two main dimension characterising the context of addressed transformations: the paradoxical torsion of the historical process of individualisation in the new spirit of capitalism; the profound redesign of the institutional programme, implying a new horizon for the instances of publicness.FindingsDifferent and contradictory trends are pointed out in the actual pursuing of objectives of governance and activation, as far as the process of individualisation and the redesign of publicness are concerned. The impossibility of finding an abstract and universal evaluation of these transformations and the necessity of situated empirical inquiries are stressed.Originality/valueThe paper demonstrates the relevance of deepening the normative underlying dimensions (with regard to individualisation and publicness) of social processes for a better understanding of concrete transformations (specifically: operational and substantive changes introduced by new modes of governance in activation policies).
PurposeThe purpose of this introduction to the special issue is to give an overview of the key aspects of the governance of activation policies as discussed in the existing literature. It explains the focus and contribution of this special issue and provides a brief summary of the main findings in the individual articles.Design/methodology/approachIn this special issue the comparative analysis of the key aspects of governance of activation policies like centralization/decentralization, new public management, marketization and network governance is covered, accompanied by an assessment of the role of implementation conditions in shaping the real trends of governance reforms of activation policies. Further, the effects of governance reforms and the influence of EU governance on the dynamics of national activation policies are discussed. This comparative analysis leads to a typology of the "worlds of governance" of activation policies in Europe.FindingsAll the countries show certain comparable converging trends in the reforms of governance of activation, although a closer look helps us determine the shape of increasingly different patterns of governance in several respects. In spite of this variety, another general finding is the common discrepancy between aims and effects: the key explanation involves implementation failures. Three governance regimes may be distinguished in the EU countries: committed marketizers, modernizers and slow modernizers.Originality/valueThis paper suggests a new typology of governance regimes.
Cordycepin (3′-deoxyadenosine) is a major bioactive agent in Cordyceps militaris, a fungus used in traditional Chinese medicine. It has been proposed to have many beneficial metabolic effects by activating AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), but the mechanism of activation remained uncertain. We report that cordycepin enters cells via adenosine transporters and is converted by cellular metabolism into mono-, di-, and triphosphates, which at high cordycepin concentrations can almost replace cellular adenine nucleotides. AMPK activation by cordycepin in intact cells correlates with the content of cordycepin monophosphate and not other cordycepin or adenine nucleotides. Genetic knockout of AMPK sensitizes cells to the cytotoxic effects of cordycepin. In cell-free assays, cordycepin monophosphate mimics all three effects of AMP on AMPK, while activation in cells is blocked by a γ-subunit mutation that prevents activation by AMP. Thus, cordycepin is a pro-drug that activates AMPK by being converted by cellular metabolism into the AMP analog cordycepin monophosphate.
The trend towards activation has been one of the major issues in recent welfare and labour market reforms in Europe and the US. Despite considerable initial variation across national models with respect to the scope and intensity of activation, redefining the link between social protection and labour market policies on the one hand and employment on the other has been a common issue in labour market reforms. The paper shows the development of activation policies in terms of basic principles, instruments, target groups and governance in Germany, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the US, Sweden and Denmark. It assesses the effectiveness and efficiency of activation policies in terms of bringing the jobless into work and ensuring sustainable independence from social benefits. Based on national activation trajectories, the paper argues that we can observe a contingent convergence of instruments, target groups, governance modes and outcomes so that established typologies of activation strategies have to be questioned.
