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With a particular focus on cultural understandings and the concepts behind welfare policies, the purpose of this paper is to analyse commonalities and dissimilarities in the patterns of social policy, and more precisely youth unemployment policies, in Sweden and Germany.

A document analysis of Swedish and German youth unemployment policies was conducted with regard to how the two welfare regimes’ policies define the underlying problem, the instruments through which this problem is tackled, and the aim of youth activation policies.

The findings show congruency concerning the definitions of the problem of youth unemployment, in which the unemployed are regarded as lacking in discipline, as well as in the policies through which the problem is tackled: through conditionality and pastoral power as policy tools. The solution of the problem on the other hand, found in the notion of the ideal worker to be produced, diverges between active entrepreneurs in one country, and blue-collar workers in the other. The authors conclude that the introduction of supranational policy concepts is not a matter of mere implementation, and that concepts like activation are reinterpreted according to differing cultural ideologies and accommodated into the context of particular welfare states.

This paper provides an innovative framework for the understanding of the influence of cultural understandings on policy making, but also on challenges facing activation governance on the one hand and European Union policy initiatives and transnational policy diffusion on the other.

The purpose of this introduction to the special issue is to give an overview of the key aspects of the governance of activation policies as discussed in the existing literature. It explains the focus and contribution of this special issue and provides a brief summary of the main findings in the individual articles.

In this special issue the comparative analysis of the key aspects of governance of activation policies like centralization/decentralization, new public management, marketization and network governance is covered, accompanied by an assessment of the role of implementation conditions in shaping the real trends of governance reforms of activation policies. Further, the effects of governance reforms and the influence of EU governance on the dynamics of national activation policies are discussed. This comparative analysis leads to a typology of the “worlds of governance” of activation policies in Europe.

All the countries show certain comparable converging trends in the reforms of governance of activation, although a closer look helps us determine the shape of increasingly different patterns of governance in several respects. In spite of this variety, another general finding is the common discrepancy between aims and effects: the key explanation involves implementation failures. Three governance regimes may be distinguished in the EU countries: committed marketizers, modernizers and slow modernizers.

This paper suggests a new typology of governance regimes.

Building on the Lau and Murnighan’s theory of fault line strength, Flache and Mäs (2008b) proposed a computational opinion dynamics model to explore the effect of demographic fault line strength on team cohesion. This study aims to extend the Flache–Mäs (FM) model to incorporate geographical location and the dyadic communication regime in opinion formation process. More specifically, we make spatially proximate agents more likely to interact with each other in the dyadic communication regime. Our results show that when agents update their opinion after each pairwise encounter, opinion polarization is lower at steady state compared to when they update their opinion after interacting with all agents. In addition, if nearby agents are more likely to interact with each other, we see greater polarization compared to the FM model with the dyadic communication regime. An immediate policy implication of this result is that organizational managers should design work space in a way that encourage wider communications between members of a team and avoid geographically local communication.

We introduce our computational models to study the effect of location and the dyadic communication regime on team performance (as measured by agents’ opinions on various work-related issues) in the presence of a strong demographic fault line. Our models are extensions of the FM model. For clarification purposes, first we describe the FM model and then elaborate our extensions.

The most important finding of this paper is that the timing of interactions plays an important role in steady state of opinion space in a given population. The reason can be traced to the path-dependent nature of social systems, in which initial adopters of a certain opinion or an ideology can significantly change the final configuration of a population. For example, if an early adopter of a given work-related issue in an organization has an extremely positive view toward that issue, and s/he interacts with nearby employees who have similar demographic attributes, we would expect to find an extreme opinion cluster with respect to that issue after a while. However, depending on factors that affect the timing of interaction between individuals, we would expect different outcome in the same organization. If, for instance, more extreme people are more likely to interact, the results would be different compared to when moderate agents are more likely to interact.

One immediate policy implication of the results of this paper is that organizational managers should design work space in a way that encourage wider communications between members of a team and avoid geographically local communication, if they are to temper the negative effect of a strong demographic fault line. However, they should be cautious and take other related findings into account to avoid undesirable outcomes. For example, according to Flache and Mäss’s results, managers can also initially encourage discussion within demographically homogenous groups and avoid controversial work-related issues. In addition, previous studies showed that more contacts between agents may increase opinion polarization. Our results provide no evidence for more complex and modern organizational designs where individuals or teams do not have a fixed location or stable geographical pattern. For instance, in a modern car manufacturing shop floor, it is possible that workers have to move with cars, or operational engineers have to move between different sections and places. Furthermore, there may be a flexible and dynamic work schedule for workers such that they share a same work station but in different time, which requires a more complex model than what we presented in this paper. In this sense, the geographical setting analyzed in this paper should not be generalized to all organizations or companies. We also have no evidence about other critical factors that might affect the communication and activation regime of individuals. For example, one could imagine a case that workers with the same level of skill in a specific work-related issue are more likely to interact with each other. Moreover, some specific organizational structures could impose additional restrictions on who can/should interact with whom.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the process that occurs within public employment offices (PEOs) and its consequences for unemployed people. Specifically, it analysed some practices needed to implement activation programmes developed in some PEO in Lombardy (Italy) and the role of front-line officers, promoting a dialogue between the literature on activation policies on one hand and the literature on street-level bureaucracy on the other.

The fieldwork has been conducted in Lombardy, which is one of most economically developed areas both in Italy and in Europe. The empirical research integrated quantitative and qualitative research tools; specifically a CATI survey of 994 persons; participant and non-participant observations, semi-structured interviews, and an analysis of documents in four PEOs.

The paper describes and analyses both practices needed to implement activation programmes and the perceptions of the social actors (unemployed people and front-line officers) who build and address these practices daily. Specifically, the attention is focussed on the different forms of discretion used by PEOs’ front-line officers and a mix of technical, relational and psychological support received in the PEOs. Moreover, the authors noticed that the front-line officers’ discretion seemed to be more limited in those parts of the activation process in which it should be more relevant, that is, the identification of training courses aimed at increasing unemployed workers’ skills. Notwithstanding these limits, many users expressed positive opinions of these courses, which could be explained by secondary functions of training courses.

The qualitative portion of the fieldwork has limited generalisability because it focussed on few PEOs.

The findings are relevant to policy makers who deal with activation policies and to public and private organisations that implement those policies.

Many studies have analysed the implementation of the welfare-to-work model that has oriented the reforms of labour market activation policies in most countries, focussing on the more tangible outcomes (essentially their efficacy in terms of re-employment rates). A growing stream of recent literature has begun to place more attention on the non-economic consequences of activation programmes, focussing mainly on countries with quite a long tradition of activation policies while remaining scant in countries where the implementation of activation programmes is still fragmented and more recent (like Italy). This paper aims to begin filling this gap by improving the knowledge on some non-economic consequences of activation programmes, focussing on user-officer relations and on daily practices in PEOs.

This paper aims to explore activation policy as a condensate for new forms of governance in respect of welfare institutions and in relation to welfare subjects. It asks how far apparently similar concepts – contractualisation, individuation, personalisation – can be applied to the governance of institutions and the governance of persons.

The paper draws on a model of different governance regimes to trace different dynamics at stake in the shift to activation policy.

Tensions in the dynamics of the transformation of welfare governance around notions of activation are highlighted. It is also argued that different reconfigurations of power are at stake in the governance of institutions and the governance of persons. Finally tensions between notions of active, activist and activation conceptions of citizenship are traced.

The paper challenges a govermentality perspective in which managerial discourses are assumed to have similar consequences for institutions and for persons, so drawing attention to the importance of context.

Limited value

This paper makes an original contribution to the field by tracing a number of different dynamics at stake in activation policy rather than assuming a coherent shift from earlier forms of welfare regime.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the question regarding how the similar implementation traditions in two countries (Czech Republic and Italy) have influenced the implementation of activation policies in the frame of similar reform trajectories (decentralization and marketization) but different modes of governance (multilevel vs hierarchical).

Moving from a policy implementation studies approach, the paper assumes that substantive reforms and procedural reforms are mutually interdependent: activation policies often require changes in delivery structures while the changes in these structures influence the key substantive features of the activation policies. Further, implementation capacities and implementation traditions shape the real policies implemented.

Although the two countries compared are different in terms of the mode of governance emerging from the governance reforms, in both cases the gaps in coordination and implementation capacities have led to several implementation failures in the field of activation policies. In poorly developed active labour market policy (ALMP) regimes, activation governance reforms (such as decentralization and marketization) may not be effective due to enduring implementation gaps.

The paper is innovative since it develops a full‐fledged comparative approach by focusing on two countries with similar implementation traditions which contrast with different modes of governance. Furthermore, the findings put implementation traditions and capacities at the heart of policymaking.

To explore and explain differences in reform of activation policies, comparing the shifts in governance in France and The Netherlands from the 1990s onwards.

The paper is based on in‐depth case studies of the reform process in activation policies, using documentary sources and interviews with several stake‐holders. The theoretical scope is the debate on institutional change, path‐dependency and convergence.

Although both countries demonstrate converging tendencies in the transformation of their activation policies, there are remarkable differences in the new modes of governance. Moving away from a traditionally hierarchical organisation, France is gradually developing a network model with more emphasis on decentralisation. Alternatively, The Netherlands privatised their public employment services and explore principal – agent realtions in activation. The institutional context of both nation, in particular the concept of path‐dependency, seems crucial in the explanation of these differences. However, some new elements are path‐breaking in a national context but do not illustrate converging trends.

This comparative study is aimed at the fields of employment services, social benefits and social assistance in two countries. For a more complete approach of the changes is activation policies, further research is needed to include other fields of social policy and other nations whithin Europe.

The paper develops both empirical and theoretical conclusions on the path‐dependent and convergin elements in transforming labour market coordination throughout Europe.

The purpose of this paper is to deal with the question of whether the expectations of improved effects due to governance reforms have been met in nine European Union (EU) countries and how they are associated with the specific characteristics of the governance of activation.

The paper distinguishes three types of effect: first, the process effects, like the treatment of unemployed people, their voice and choice when involved in activation and the individualized nature of the service provision process. Second, the paper looks at output effects (policy effort), which include the range (scope) and variety of the programs, the coverage and outreach (targeting) of programs and services to specific groups and service content and quality. Last, the paper is interested in the outcome/employment effects (gross and net) on job placement.

The authors conclude that the effects of the governance reforms are not unequivocally in favour of the reforms. This is a remarkable finding since all the countries that have been studied show similarities and to some extent converging trends in activation reforms. The reasons for this discrepancy between aims and effects are not easy to detect; nevertheless, implementation difficulties are one explanation and problems with adequate financing may be another.

The complex model of the effects of activation is combined with a governance perspective. This makes it possible to disentangle the effects of governance reforms to some extent. The findings may stimulate further research and orient policy making in activation.

This paper addresses the labour market impacts of Covid-19, the necessity of active labour policy reform in response to this pandemic unemployment crisis and what trajectory this reform is likely to take as countries shift attention from emergency income supports to stimulating employment recovery.

The study draws on Ireland’s experience, as an illustrative case. This is motivated by the scale of Covid-related unemployment in Ireland, which is partly a function of strict lockdown measures but also the policy choices made in relation to the architecture of income supports. Also, Ireland was one of the countries most impacted by the Great Recession leading it to introduce sweeping reforms of its active labour policy architecture.

The analysis shows that the Covid unemployment crisis has far exceeded that of the last financial and banking crisis in Ireland. Moreover, Covid has also exposed the fragility of Ireland's recovery from the Great Recession and the fault-lines of poor public services, which intensify precarity in the context of low-paid employment growth precipitated by workfare policies implemented since 2010. While these policies had some short-term success in reducing the numbers on the Live Register, many cohorts were left behind by the reforms and these employment gains have now been almost entirely eroded.

The lessons from Ireland's experience of post-crisis activation reform speak to the challenges countries now face in adapting their welfare systems to facilitate a post-Covid recovery, and the risks of returning to “workfare” as usual.

This editorial aims to introduce the first of a set of two special issues on New modes of governance in activation policies.

The article explores the concept of governance, distinguishing a broad and more narrow use of the concept. Then, it argues that issues of governance should be an integral part of studies of welfare state transformations. Not in the last instance, because governance reforms do have an impact on the content of social policies and social services such as activation. The article continues by discussing three models of the provision of social services.

The article states that the development of the modes of governance in activation in various countries reveals that a mix of service provision models is being used.

The article introduces the articles of the special issue.