Flexicurity and the dynamics of the welfare state adjustments

Abstract

The disruptions of the recent global financial crisis intensified a number of industrial and economic challenges and brought forward a set of often contradictory solutions. Here, we focus on two alternative views on how to (re)establish economic competitiveness and enable growth – flexicurity and austerity. There is much to be learned about the future of these conflicting recipes across changing political economies, particularly considering the importance of the social partners in the development of flexicurity, and their differential ability to influence welfare state outcomes more broadly. Two questions emerge. Attentive to the role and capacity of the social partners, what can we learn about the dynamics of the ongoing welfare state adjustments? How do we make sense of labour market politics in this paradoxical environment? In order to help answer these, we visit the United Kingdom and Denmark – one state offering modest social and employment security, the other a paragon of flexicurity – and find their divergent philosophies, institutional development, and organisational interactions explain not only their respective choices in the aftermath of the crisis, but also their prospects for socially oriented labour policies.