Institutionalizing Dualism: Complementarities and Change in France and Germany

Abstract

The French and German political economies have been significantly reconfigured over the past two decades. Although the changes have often been more piecemeal than revolutionary, their cumulative effects are profound. The authors characterize the changes that have taken place as involving the institutionalization of new forms of dualism and argue that what gives contemporary developments a different character from the past is that dualism is now explicitly underwritten by state policy. They see this outcome as the culmination of a sequence of developments, beginning in the field of industrial relations, moving into labor market dynamics, and finally finding institutional expression in welfare state reforms. Contrary to theoretical accounts that suggest that institutional complementarities support stability and institutional reproduction, the authors argue that the linkages across these realms have helped to translate employer strategies that originated in the realm of industrial relations into a stable, new, and less egalitarian model with state support

Futures of European welfare models and policies: seeking actual research questions, and new problem-solving arsenal for European welfare states

“…Liberal welfare states have been found to adapt more quickly, but in ways that exacerbate existing high levels of inequality. Such welfare policies can be identified in in the U.S.A. and United Kingdom in conservative welfare states, previously characterised as frozen landscapes [25], have also demonstrated adjustment, but at the cost of dualisation [26], which is also evident in Mediterranean welfare models. Dualisation in a society means that there are considerable amount of people (1) who are Boutside societyâ nd (2) who are defined to be Bunderclass^, (3) who have the status of Bworking poor^and (4) who are Bdis-advantaged^.…”

The Impact of Labour Market Reform Policies on Insiders’ and Outsiders’ Low-Wage Risk

“…Our interest concerns those reform measures that are directed towards a more liberal labour market configuration and are often discussed as forms of activation (Palier, 2010;Gilbert, 2002;Palier and Thelen, 2010). This term refers to a wide range of institutional measures 1 -here, we focus on elements of activation policies that act as mechanisms to stimulate market forces and thereby produce risks on the individual level.…”

“…In recent decades, social and labour policy reforms have substantially changed the context of employment in advanced societies (Gilbert and Voorhuis, 2001;Palier, 2010). Empirical research has shown that this process led to increasing rates of atypical employment, lowwage work, and in-work poverty (Lohmann, 2009;Andreß and Lohmann, 2008;Lucifora et al, 2005;OECD, 2011).…”

Outsiderness among young people in Europe: A fuzzy set analysis

“…More recently, a new approach -the dualisation literature -has gained importance within the field of comparative political economy (Rueda, 2007;Palier and Thelen, 2010;Emmenegger et al, 2012). As can be seen below, each of these three strands of literature has different analytical roots and attempts to deal with different socio-political challenges.…”

“…These authors have pinpointed the process of dualisation as the main driver of change (Rueda, 2007;Palier and Thelen, 2010;Emmenegger et al, 2012). Although these scholars speak of the existence of different patterns of dualisation (Schwander and Hausermann, 2013), they do not explain why in some countries it is mostly young labour market participants who are the outsiders.…”