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Abstract
Given the heterogeneity of European welfare states, governments' efforts in 'social investment' reform may reap different outcomes in different national contexts. Through multi-level modelling based on longitudinal microdata from the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (2004–2013) and on country-level policy indicators, this article assesses: whether citizens of countries that put higher budgetary efforts into social investment have better employment prospects and whether increasing such efforts over time improves employment chances within a country; whether people living in social investment-oriented welfare states maintained higher employment chances in the years of the Great Recession; whether micro-level employment outcomes depend on (in-)complementarities between investment- and protection-oriented policies. The results reveal that the most social investment-oriented welfare states show higher individual-level employment chances, which they were able to preserve during the Great Recession. However, increasing resources on social investments does not always yield empirically discernible returns over the short-to-medium term.

European welfare states face multiple challenges: global and EU market integration, rapid technological change, the changing nature of (gendered) social risks in ageing post-industrial societies and, last but not least, the Great Recession cast a shadow on the effectiveness and sustainability of the European Social Model (ESM) as we know it. Born from the academic debate over welfare state change, the blueprint of 'social investment' has been proposed as a new edifice for the ESM. The social investment approach puts the stress on policies aimed to prepare and mobilize human capital. By doing that, it shifts the logic of the welfare state from protection against the market to social inclusion within today's labour markets, with a view to reconciling the economic and social objectives of 21st century welfare capitalism. The imperatives of social investment have informed EU growth and cohesion strategies since the launch of the Lisbon Agenda in 2000. More recently, they have been explicitly endorsed by the European Commission with the adoption of a 'Social Investment Package' in 2013. In the crisis aftershocks, however, the road towards an EU-wide social investment strategy is steeper than it may seem. Most European countries fall short of the social investment ideal-type, and must strive to adjust welfare provision to the changing context and social risks. On top of that, austerity constraints their room for manoeuvre. Some questions hence come to the fore: in the first place, could social investment weather the crisis? If so, does it effectively deliver the wished-for economic and social outcomes? More specifically: does it foster both the employment and social inclusion of European citizens with different socioeconomic characteristics? And how do the outcomes of social investment vary across European countries which have profoundly diverse welfare legacies and policy mixes? This monograph provides an empirical assessment of the road(s) that EU welfare states are taking in the time of the economic crisis, whereby that of an inclusive social investment strategy is just the best of many possible trajectories of recalibration. It does so in a truly comparative fashion, not limited to few case studies and country-comparisons, but which, by contrast, seeks to explain the dynamics of social investment reform and outcomes through variables, in the context of a large-N empirical study. This work makes a three-fold contribution. First, it relies on a novel policy data—the Social Investment Welfare Expenditure dataset—to track the trajectory followed by social investment in welfare reform across all EU member states from 2000 to 2014, through the crisis years. Second, it is a first attempt to link macro-level welfare state change with its outcomes at the micro level. More specifically, through multilevel analysis based on EU-SILC microdata (EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions), it shows how different policy mixes influence the employment prospects and income security of individuals and households across European countries. Third, by putting to the empirical test some of the most crucial and normatively contentious issues related to social investment—which is often criticized for bringing about 'workfare' and inequality through 'Matthew effects'—this monograph seeks to add substance to both academic and policy debates. ; Die europäischen Wohlfahrtsstaaten stehen vor vielfältigen Herausforderungen: die globale und EU Marktintegration, der beschleunigte technologische Wandel, sich wandelnde (geschlechterspezifische) Risiken alternder post-industrieller Gesellschaften und, schlussendlich, die immer noch nicht vollständig überwundene Weltwirtschaftskrise der letzten Jahre, werfen ihre Schatten auf die Effektivität und Nachhaltigkeit des uns bekannten Europäischen Sozialmodells (ESM). Ausgehend von wissenschaftlichen Debatten über wohlfahrtsstaatlichen Wandel, wird der Ansatz des "social investment" als Blaupause für eine neues, tragfähiges ESM betrachtet. Hierbei werden solche Politikinstrumente besonders betont, die das Ziel der Vorbereitung und Mobilisierung von Humankapital verfolgen. Dadurch verschiebt sich die wohlfahrtsstaatliche Logik weg von einem Schutz gegenüber dem Markt hin zu einer Einbindung in den Arbeitsmarkt, um so wirtschaftliche und soziale Ziele im Wohlfahrtskapitalismus des 21. Jahrhunderts miteinander in Einklang zu bringen. Im Bereich der EU, sind solche Leitbilder des "social investment" seit dem Start der Lissabon-Strategie im Jahr 2000 fester Bestandteil unterschiedlicher Wachstums- und Kohäsionsinitativen, und wurden zuletzt durch die Europäische Kommission bei der Annahme "Sozialinvestitionspaketes" im Jahr 2013 explizit befürwortet. In der Folge der Wirtschafts- und Finanzkrise ist der Weg zu einer EU-weiten Sozialinvestitionsstrategie jedoch steiler als es den Anschein hat. Die meisten europäischen Länder bleiben hinter dem Idealtyp des "social investment" zurück und müssen ihre Wohlfahrtsangebote an den sich wandelnden Kontext und gesellschaftliche Risiken anpassen, wobei ihr Handlungsspielraum durch verbreitete Sparzwänge im Sinne der Austeritätspolitik weiter eingeschränkt wird. Entsprechend wirft dies einige Fragen auf: Können Sozialinvestitionen die Krise überstehen? Falls ja, können sie die gewünschten wirtschaftlichen und sozialen Ergebnisse liefern? Genauer gesagt: fördern solche Instrumente sowohl die Beschäftigung als auch die gesellschaftliche Integration europäischer Bürger mit unterschiedliche sozioökonomischen Merkmalen? Wie unterscheiden sich die Ergebnisse der Sozialinvestitionen zwischen europäischen Ländern mit grundlegend verschiedenen Wohlfahrtsstrukturen und Politikkonzepten? Die vorliegende Monographie liefert eine empirische Untersuchung der Richtung(en), welche die EU-Wohlfahrtsstaaten in Zeiten der Wirtschaftskrise eingeschlagen haben, wobei jene einer inklusiven Sozialinvestitionsstrategie nur den Besten vieler möglichen Anpassungspfade darstellt. Im Sinne einer vergleichenden Studie, die über einzelne Fälle hinausgeht, unternimmt die Arbeit einen Versuch, die Reformdynamiken von Sozialinvestitionen und deren Ergebnisse im Rahmen einer variablenbasierten statistischen Analyse mit hoher Fallzahl (large-N) zu erklären, und leistet auf diese Weise drei Beiträge: Erstens basiert sie auf neuen Daten zur Sozialpolitik – dem "Social Investment Welfare Expenditure" Datensatz –und zeichnet so die Pfade verschiedener Sozialinvestitions- und Wohlfahrtsreformen in allen EU-Mitgliedsländern in den Jahren 2000-2014 nach. Zweitens, stellt die Studie einen ersten Versuch dar, Makroveränderungen auf der Ebene des Wohlfahrtsstaates mit Ergebnissen auf der Mikroebene zu verbinden. Mithilfe einer Mehrebenenanalyse auf Basis von EU-SILC Mikrodaten (EU Statistics on Income and Living Standards) zeigt sie inwiefern verschiedene Maßnahmenpakete (policy mixes) Beschäftigungsaussichten und Einkommenssicherheit von Individuen und Haushalten in europäischen Ländern beeinflussen. Schließlich unterfüttert die Monographie drittens sowohl akademische als auch politische Debatten über das Konzept der Sozialinvestitionen, da sie diesen zentralen und normativ umstrittenen Sachverhalt, welcher oftmals als "Workfare"-basiert und ungerechte "Matthäus-Effekte" erzeugend kritisiert wird, einem empirischen Test unterzieht.

The social investment approach has been advocated as a blueprint for recasting European welfare states since the years of the Lisbon Strategy. After the Euro crisis squeezed the fiscal space available for welfare recalibration, the question has been raised as to whether social investment could withstand the economic turmoil. Relying on a new welfare expenditure dataset constructed from various Eurostat sources, this article looks at the budgetary recalibration of 27 EU welfare states from the launch of the Lisbon Strategy to the aftermath of the Euro crisis (2000 to 2014). It compares the financial efforts that governments have put into social investment- and social protection-oriented policies, highlighting the different trajectories taken by EU welfare states at the crisis crossroads. Four scenarios for welfare recalibration are put forward, based on the social investment perspective and its critiques. The results show that the overall progress made by social investment in welfare budgets since 2000 came to a halt with the outbreak of the crisis. Bleaker scenarios materialised, whereas EU welfare states pursued retrenchment rather than investment, or had to face harsher budgetary trade-offs, expanding social investment to the detriment of social protection.

AbstractUntil recently, the idea of a European minimum wage (EMW) policy had never taken concrete shape, due to the heterogeneity of national wage‐setting and collective bargaining institutions, uncertain EU competence on the matter, and widespread scepticism amongst political actors. In 2022, however, the EU adopted a directive on adequate minimum wages. How did this make it to the EU agenda, despite the many political, territorial and institutional tensions? What coalitions supported and opposed it? Based on a reconstruction of the policy process substantiated by an analysis of news media data and 14 interviews, this article investigates the multi‐level politics of the EMW. It shows that, despite enduring 'euro‐social scepticism' in northern Europe, the emergence of pro‐minimum wage coalitions in key member states and the increase of party‐competition dynamics at the EU level were crucial in overcoming the lines of conflict that had long hindered EU initiatives on minimum wage co‐ordination.

In the twentieth century national social policies stabilized the European state systems, favouring domestic concordance and citizens' support to the nation-building process. Welfare institutions have historically served this key political function also in federal systems, where social citizenship has been used as a tool to foster unity. In contrast, even though the EU devotes a consistent part of its (however limited) budget to social cohesion and inclusion programmes, it takes little credit for such efforts. Building on original survey data on public opinion collected in 2019 across ten EU countries, this article shows that, indeed, only a limited number of citizens are aware of the social role played by the EU in their local community. On the other hand, it demonstrates that citizens' awareness of EU programmes strengthens the individual perception of power resources stemming from euro-social initiatives, the feeling of 'being heard' by the EU and, ultimately, the support for the European integration project as a whole. By implication, increasing the relevance and visibility of euro-social programmes could possibly reinforce the very foundations of the EU.

AbstractThis article examines the trends and differences in predictors of public support for European Union (EU) fiscal solidarity using two individual surveys conducted in 2019 and 2020, before and during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic, in six Western European countries. We focus on individual self-interest and European/national identification as the two major determinants of public preference formation. Empirical analyses show that, while the average level of public support for European fiscal solidarity did not change from 2019 to 2020, the negative associations between exclusive national identification and economic vulnerability, on the one hand, and EU fiscal solidarity on the other were weakened. Among both, the identitarian source retained substantive (although reduced) relevance in 2020, while utility did not. Country-level analyses reveal a more complex picture, but the overall pattern holds across the member states included in our sample. We argue that the reduced explanatory power of these typical heuristics that individuals use to shape their attitudes towards European solidarity is connected to the nature of the pandemic as an exogenous 'common crisis', affecting all member states in a supposedly symmetric manner, at least in the first phase, and inducing interdependencies among them.

AbstractWelfare provision is often conceived through the lens of decommodification and analysed in (re)distributive terms. This article argues that a distributive approach does not sufficiently capture the complexity of 21st century welfare state dynamics. It proposes re-conceptualizing provision as a mix of three policy functions: raising and maintaining human capital stock; easing the flow of gendered life-course and labour-market transitions; guaranteeing social safety-net buffers. This analytical perspective allows theorizing life-course multiplier effects and policy (non-)complementarities, both at the level of individual objective and subjective well-being and in terms of aggregate employment, poverty and fiscal sustainability. This perspective also enables us to extend the temporal horizon of welfare politics beyond short-term electoral logics for explaining welfare reform. The article underscores how methodological pluralism remains key for understanding contemporary welfare states, and for grasping welfare outcomes and institutional change in a research endeavour that involves both generalization and contextualization.

AbstractEurope is witnessing a 'double dualisation' process, whereby inequalities have increased both between labour market insiders and outsiders, and between core and peripheral countries. We test the double dualisation hypothesis in the context of the first wave of the COVID‐19 pandemic. Did the COVID crisis exacerbate income inequalities between insiders and outsiders? Did cross‐country territorial divides also increase? Did national governments' emergency measures contribute to containing or widening double dualisation? We deploy a multi‐method research design that combines original survey data on seven old EU member states with three case studies on Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands. Results show that, in the short term, the COVID‐19 pandemic has been a catalyst of double dualisation: outsiders bore the greatest burden, especially in southern European countries. National emergency measures largely depended on the fiscal leeway available to governments and followed pre‐existing welfare trajectories, thus worsening cross‐country inequalities, with potentially severe consequences for the European integration process.

Research on the link between turnout and corruption has produced inconclusive evidence: while some studies find corruption to be positively related to turnout, others report a negative relationship. This article argues that the relevant question is not whether corruption has a positive or negative effect on turnout, but for whom. We hypothesize that the effect of corruption on the likelihood to vote depends on individuals' employment sector. Public employees have different incentives to vote in corrupt settings since their jobs often depend on the political success of the government of the day. Hence, while corruption dampens turnout among ordinary citizens, public employees are more likely to vote in highly corrupt countries. Analysis of World Values Survey data from 44 countries, shows that the differential in voting propensity between public employees and other citizens gets larger as corruption increases, partially confirming our expectations.