Workfare With Welfare: Recent Reforms of the Danish Welfare State

Abstract

Denmark has recently seen a significant drop in unemployment that has not been matched by any corresponding increase in inflation. This article assumes that this remarkable achievement is rooted in the ongoing transition from the Keynesian welfare state (KWS) to a Schumpeterian workfare regime (SWR). The article compares the main features of the KWS with those of the SWR. It analyses the economic and political pressures behind the transition from the KWS to a SWR, and argues that we need to focus on the discursive construction of these pressures in order to avoid the dangers associated with functionalist explanations of societal changes. It then goes on to analyse the introduction of workfare policies in Denmark. The central claim is that Denmark has adopted an offensive workfare strategy. Hence, in Denmark workfare is disarticulated from the neo-liberal context within which it is located in the UK and the US and rearticulated with the social-democratic and universalistic welfare model. This disarticulation and rearticulation has produced significant emphases on activation rather than benefit and minimum wage reductions; on improving the skills and work experience of the unemployed rather than merely increasing their mobility and job-searching efficiency; on training and education rather than work-for-benefit (quid pro quo ); on empowerment rather than control and punishment; and on broad workfare programmes rather than programmes which only target the unemployed. In addition, although it contains strong neocorporatist elements, the Danish workfare strategy can be characterized as a neo-statist strategy. The article concludes with some tentative remarks about the mix of political and institutional factors that contribute to explaining the particular Danish variant of the SWR, and about what we can learn from the Danish case.