Europeanisation and the Political Economy of Active Labour Market Policies

Since the adoption of the European Employment Strategy (EES) a number of qualitative studies have shown that reforms in labour market policies vary across countries and that Europeanisation affected these reforms in different ways. In addition to these studies, the present study tests several hypotheses to explain the variation in expenditures on active labour market policies (ALMPs) using quantitative data from the EU15 between 1985 and 2003. At the EU level we find that the European Employment Strategy and the EMU are related to the level of spending on activation and at the domestic level these policies are related to corporatism. Furthermore we trace the impact of specific mechanisms of this new mode of governance and we examine the participation of actors in the national processes of the EES rather than considering its effect as a constant factor. This study finds empirical evidence that the peer review programme affects ALMPs at the national level more than council recommendations do. This means that variation in the impact of European integration is not only due to different national institutions and politics. The fact that the European governance process is variable itself should be taken into account ass well