Editorial: the survival and significance of European national employment models

Abstract

This is the tenth annual European employment review and the second edited by the new editorial team. This year’s review addresses the survival and significance of national employment models in Europe. While policy makers and analysts frequently refer to the notion of a distinctive European social model, in practice this collective European social model is a reflection of the range of strong and distinctive employment and social models at national level that coexist within the EU. It is through these national models that European Member States have carved out their particular development paths and areas of comparative advantage within the world economy (Hall and Soskice, 2001; Hollingsworth and Boyer, 1997; Sorge, 1991), and it is through their successful combination of productive efficiency with employment and social rights that it has been possible to question the neoliberal assumption that economic competitiveness requires minimal employment rights and social protection. However, over recent years, these success stories have given way to a view that national employment models in the EU are now inhibiting rather than promoting growth; that they are both too rigid and inflexible and also outdated, founded in an era dominated by mass manufacturing and households based on a single male breadwinner. For some, the whole concept of a European social model has become anachronistic; globalisation of product and financial markets has undermined the basis for alternative modes of organising employment and welfare within national borders. For others, including the European Commission, the argument is that in order to protect the European way of doing things, it is first necessary to modernise and change the national models that underpin the notion of a European social model. However, the capacity of the European social model to survive if the individual national employment models are transformed is an issue that remains hotly debated (Bosch et al., 2007; 2009; Hancke et al., 2007; Jepsen and Serrano Pascual, 2006; Scharpf, 1999; Wickham, 2005). This review takes up these very topical issues through a range of different perspectives and methodologies. The first three articles are concerned directly with the issue of the origins of diverse national models and the current process of change and transformation within these national models. Deakin and Sarkar consider the role of law, particularly employment law, in the development and performance of a variety of capitalist economies—namely the United States, the UK, Germany and France—and explore, using new empirical evidence based on a new index of changes in labour law,