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Cutting their coat… The content of courses for training technicians at the Belfast College of Technology has not kept pace with the rapid changes in skills needed to fix and maintain the technologically‐advanced machinery widely employed in the clothing industry, states a report by the Northern Ireland Economic Council. Since it is not possible for the College to invest in its own advanced machinery, the report Economic Strategy: The Clothing Industry suggests that steps be taken to see if it is feasible for students to be given practical instruction within factories during the traditional early closing hours on Fridays. In view of the labour supply difficulties in some of its areas, it also urges measures to promote the clothing industry positively through local schools and job centres — in a way that would correct the current poor image the industry projects. It also underlines a need to keep training provision under review to ensure that local firms can react quickly and flexibly to the increasing pace of fashion changes. The report states:

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.