The employment policies in Denmark and the United Kingdom

Sciences politiques | 8 pages | 05-03-2006 | Format : | Note : Non noté

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Résumé

Compare the employment policies of two EU states and evaluate their success.

Extract:

At the Lisbon European Council in 2000, the then fifteen heads of states and governments agreed on the goal to make the EU the most competitive knowledge based economy capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion. They also agreed on the targets on an employment rate of 70 per cent in 2010, with an employment rate for women of 60 percent. In 2004, two of the member states, Denmark and the United Kingdom, have already met these targets. Both have embraced active labour market policies (as opposed to a passive treatment of unemployment relying on the sole provision of benefits), which seek to enhance the employability of the unemployed by providing training and encouraging active job search, sometimes with an element of compulsion (refusal to accept a job a offer can mean withdrawal of the benefits). Denmark and Britain have also tried to provide incentives to work through the tax and benefit system. One final similarity is that the two countries have adopted active labour market policies under social democratic rule: the social democrats were in power in Denmark from 1993 to 2001, and the Blair government in Britain looks set to win its third general election in a row.

Some scholars have seen this shift to active labour market policies as a significant change in Western welfare state. For Bob Jessop, it is part of a change from the Keynesian welfare state regime to what he calls a Schumpeterian Competition State, where competitiveness depends on developing the capacity to engage in permanent innovation, in a context of increasing competition . However, for Jessop, this shift can take different forms, and he contrasts coercive neo-liberal job-search schemes with more comprehensive ones such as the Danish model . What we should bear in mind while analysing the successes of employment in Britain and Denmark is that the two countries have different traditions: a social democratic tradition of high welfare provision and social partnership in Denmark, and a more liberal tradition in Britain. It seems indeed that Denmark has been more successful than Britain in expanding labour force participation, as the level of inequality has remained low and high levels of welfare provision have been preserved. However, the Danish model comes at a price of high taxation and high spending, whereas the Blair government has operated in a more constrained financial framework.

This essay will look in detail at the employment policies of both Britain and Denmark before drawing a comparison between them, and finally assessing their respective successes ...

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