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This article contributes to the ongoing debate on the forms and characteristics of social investment policies and their potential trade-off with social security schemes by assessing developments of welfare spending profiles in 23 European welfare states in the 2000s. I argue that if a social investment turn has indeed occurred, it is not necessarily at the cost of the 'old' compensatory policies. Instead, social investment policies and their relation to compensating welfare policies alter with regard to policies targeted at different life-stages and to the type of welfare regime. Therefore, the results attest to a path-dependent trend within the welfare regimes, the Nordic countries remaining clear forerunners in terms of both level and dynamics of social investment policies. European social investment strategies manifest mainly in policies targeting childhood and youth, while a trade-off between social investment and compensating policies is evident in working-age policies to some degree.

This article demonstrates the potential of the disaggregated expenditure approach in comparative welfare state analysis by applying it for comparing patterns of welfare spending across 28 European countries. An initial factor analysis shows that welfare states differ primarily along their emphasis either on cash transfers for the elderly or on social services and cash transfers for the working-age population. European welfare states cluster along these two spending dimensions in a way that to a great extent coincides with the well-known delineation of welfare regimes based on institutional characteristics. Furthermore, the results attest to the emergence of a variety of welfare arrangements in the post-communist region, yet with a general orientation toward a Bismarckian or conservative model. The results of this analysis demonstrate that disaggregated welfare expenditure measures retain considerable importance in elucidating the realities of contemporary welfare policy.

AbstractThis study investigates how policies shape retirement and labour market participation of older workers and thus help extending working lives. It employs a time‐series–cross‐section analysis of the effects of macro‐level institutional pull, push and retention factors on effective retirement age and employment rate of older workers in 15 OECD countries from 1992 to 2010. The comparative approach reveals that public pension system rules that have been geared towards postponing retirement in many countries in past decades, indeed, are significant determinants of lengthening working lives. In particular, statutory retirement age and financial disincentives for early retirement proof important. Institutional effects differ by gender, though. Furthermore, the results point to the importance of social policies supporting labour market participation throughout the life‐course: social investment in human capital and public services clearly supports extending working lives.

Despite the ever growing body of scholarly work on policy developments in the post-communist New Member States of the European Union (NMS), systematic comparisons of policy outcome performance and its determinants are still scarce. This article identifies patterns of post-communist policy outcomes across the fields of economic, social and environmental policy. By employing pooled time-series cross-sectional analysis with a Fixed Effects Vector Decomposition (FEVD) estimator it investigates to what extent policy outcome performance is determined by differing policy efforts (outputs or reform tracks), transitional conditions and international influences. Although citizens are still negatively affected by the initial economic recession, especially in the social domain, policy reforms and efforts are decisive in determining the outcome performance of the NMS relative to one another in the longer run. Successful and comprehensive market reforms and steering capabilities prove to be particularly important in this regard. Furthermore, internationalisation has an important, albeit ambiguous, impact. While exposure to the world market is reflected in negative policy performance, interaction with and financial commitment from Western European Union countries promote positive policy outcomes. Adapted from the source document.

Das Aufkommen extremistischer Kräfte in Finnland ist eng mit den historischen und geopolitischen Entwicklungen sowie mit der homogenen Bevölkerungsstruktur des Landes verbunden. Bis zum Zusammenbruch der Sowjetunion bestimmten außenpolitische Doktrinen die Erscheinungsformen und die Intensität des politischen Extremismus. Während rechtsextremes Gedankengut durch einen breiten gesellschaftlich und politischen Konsens verbannt war, erlangten die von der Sowjetunion unterstützten Kommunisten konstant zweistellige Wahlergebnisse und mehrfach Regierungsverantwortung. Seit 1990 ist politischer Extremismus in Finnland eine marginale Randerscheinung, wenngleich sich extremistische Strömungen in jeweils zwei links- und rechtsextremistischen Parteien manifestiert haben. Ihre Wahlerfolge beschränken sich auf die kommunale Ebene. Die Ursachen dafür, warum das Potenzial für extremistische Kräfte bisher nicht ausgeschöpft werden konnte, sind der Erfolg rechtspopulistischer Parteien, die konsensorientierte politische Kultur und eine vergleichsweise hohe Zufriedenheit mit dem politischen System. (ICE2)

This study investigates the contribution of educational expansion to changes in labour force participation among Europeans aged 55-74 between 2000 and 2019, while accounting for changes in educational inequalities in labour market activity. We use data from the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS) for 26 countries and Kitagawa-Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition methods to analyse the extent to which changes in the education structure may account for rises in labour force participation rates among older workers in these countries, and the degree to which returns to education have changed. Overall, we found that educational expansion is positively associated with increases in labour force participation, albeit with substantial cross-country variation in the scale of this association. A driving factor was the decrease in the share of the population with low education levels, followed by an increase in the share of those with high education levels. While activity rates rose in most countries and among all levels of education, the largest increases were observed among people with a medium level of education. Activity rates of low-educated older workers, especially women, grew at a substantially lower pace in some countries, exacerbating educational inequalities in labour force participation at older ages. The study suggests that educational expansion has been a driver of longer working lives in Europe. However, it also indicates that changes in health, working conditions and age norms at the microlevel, as well as pension and labour market reforms at the macrolevel, can be assumed to have played a dominant role in countries where increases in labour force participation were the most significant.

Der Beitrag zum Parteiensystem Finnlands beschreibt zunächst die historische Entwicklung der Parteien seit 1809 bis 2002, wobei auch das Parteiensystem der autonomen Alandinseln skizziert wird. Der zweite Schritt informiert über die Strukturmerkmale des Parteiensystems, während der dritte Schritt die institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen des Parteienwettbewerbs (Wahl- und Parteienrecht, Parteienfinanzierung) umfasst. Im Anschluss folgt eine Betrachtung der Bürger und ihres Wahlverhaltens bzw. ihrer Wahlbeteiligung. Der fünfte Schritt widmet sich schließlich den Regierungskoalitionen und Phasen des Parteiensystems nach 1945, wobei drei Perioden unterschieden werden: (1) die Phase der Neuorientierung nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg, (2) die Ära Kekkonens 1956 bis 1981 sowie (3) die Phase der Parlamentarisierung nach 1982. Finnland stellt ein überaus dynamisches Parteiensystem mit einigen Spezifika dar. Zum einen ist es sehr stark fragmentiert, ferner zeichnet sich das finnische Parteiensystem aber auch durch eine hohe Integrationsfähigkeit aus. (ICG2)