1.1 Foreword
Over the past few decades, an increasing number of scholars have explained the relevance of cognitive and ideational factors in the legitimation of policy solutions (March and Olsen 1989; Hall 1993; Schmidt 2008) and have highlighted how policymaking in advanced capitalist countries has been influenced by economic theories and intellectual and normative ideas, such as Keynesianism and neoliberalism (Hall 1989; Blyth 2002; Campbell and Pedersen 2001, 2014). In particular, the role of transnational paradigms in shaping the political “vision of the world” and influencing national governments actions has been recognised. The strength of such ideas is boosted by the international institutions and powerful epistemic communities that create, validate and disseminate them, thereby contributing to the fact that while certain ideas succeed or persist—considered as they are to be the most adequate in responding to societal needs—others fail and are replaced (Keune and Serrano 2014; Rich 2004; Eriksen and Fossum 2002; Crouch 2011; Schmidt and Thatcher 2013).
The European Union (EU) is certainly one of the most influential institutions promoting policy ideas and is strongly committed to fostering common strategies for member states’ economic and social governance by providing sets of diagnostics and recommendations. Since its establishment, the EU has endorsed a variety of policy paradigms through specific initiatives and these ideas have entered into domestic political debates and agendas. This has undeniably taken place since the late nineties with the European Employment Strategy (EES), today part of Europe 2020 Strategy, and through the Open Method of Coordination (OMC): in the case in question, social learning processes and ideational factors have played an important role in bringing about social and labour market reforms in Europe (Ferrera et al. 2002; Hemerijck 2017).
This book incorporates the role played by EU policy ideas into the comparative political economy debate about the convergence and divergence of institutional architectures of capitalist societies (Clift 2012). Within this debate, some authors have emphasised the external economic and political constraints, driven by EU policy ideas, that are leading towards the convergence of socio-economic regulation across EU countries, especially in the labour market, welfare and industrial relations arenas (Baccaro and Howell 2017; Streeck 2012). Others, instead, have provided evidence that the policy ideas spreading across Europe are broad and flexible, and argued that this malleable structure means that they can be adapted to different contexts (Burroni and Keune 2011; Ban 2016). Many scholars in the latter group show that path-dependency and historical legacy still play an important part in countries’ trajectories and that models of capitalism maintain their differences (Amable 2003; Bohle and Greskovits 2012; Burroni and Scalise 2017; Crouch 2015; Hall and Soskice 2001).
This book contributes to this last particular strand of research and argues that transnational policy ideas are interpreted from below and assume different meanings in different contexts. However, its focus of analysis is rather different from the line prevalently taken in political economy literature, for two main reasons.
First, I assume that the local level of regulation is more relevant than is usually postulated. Even in multi-level governance studies, the local level is often little explored and regarded as secondary compared to macroeconomic and structural analysis (Brenner 2004). I will show that the local level is, on the contrary, a key dimension, especially when analysing policy arenas such as labour market regulation and social policy. In multi-layered European governance, vertical processes entail that local, national and supranational institutions and actors interact and negotiate policy paradigms, strategies and objectives, but that, in doing so, meanings change. As this volume will highlight, in this process institutions and actors located at the local level are crucial: they are the ones, in fact, who actually turn policy ideas into concrete measures and put the policies into practice.
Secondly, but connected to the first point raised above, I argue that when policy ideas reach the local level of regulation and require implementation, a process of interpretation takes place, which results from the interplay between structure and agency. Indeed, the empirical analysis reported in the second part of the book will demonstrate that, in order to understand the translation of policy ideas into concrete local programs, we need to take into account the interplay between domestic institutional architecture and historical legacies on the one hand and the choices and action of political and social actors on the other. Both factors play a central role in this process, and their interplay contributes to endowing policy ideas with a specific meaning and to shaping local policy measures and practices, which vary from context to context.
The book explains how policy ideas are incorporated and translated into local policy reforms by focusing on one of the key arenas in comparative political economy analysis, labour market regulation, and by analysing one of the leading policy paradigms of the EES, the idea of Active Inclusion. Active inclusion is a policy idea supported by the European Commission (EC) and launched through a specific recommendation to the member states in 2008 in order to respond to the challenge of social exclusion in Europe (Commission Recommendation 2008/867/EC). This policy idea, which sought to help the member states modernise their social protection systems and address growing poverty and social exclusion by making labour markets more inclusive, emerged as part of the new wave of welfare state recalibration. This was characterised by the transition from the logic of compensation to the logic of prevention, in which inclusion is realised not only through income support but especially through re-training and participation in work. Following the Social Investment approach (Hemerijck 2017), the core of social policy shifts from the protection of income, compensation, and indemnification to the enforcement of education, re-skilling, labour participation and protection from the new social risks which especially affect women and younger people (Ferrera and Rhodes 2000; Pierson 2001). Thus, social policy increasingly embraces labour market policies, enhancing the various social functions of activation, paid work and participation in the labour force (Barbier and Ludwig-Mayerhofer 2004).
What is the domestic response to this supranational idea? What happens to the active inclusion idea when it reaches the local level of regulation and must be implemented and delivered? How is it translated into local programmes and practices? What actors take part in this process?
These are the questions that this book intends to answer. As Barbier and Ludwig-Mayerhofer noted, “as activation ideology and practice seem to invade more or less all countries, not least under the influence of the European Employment Strategy, its multi-faceted and variegated nature remains to be fully discovered” (2004, p. 429). My purpose here is to explore this variegated nature of active inclusion by examining its local delivery. Almost ten years after the European Commission’s launch of the Active Inclusion recommendation, and in the aftermath of one of the most trying periods in Europe’s recent economic and political history, the book offers a critical and timely reassessment. By contributing to the growing scholarly literature on ideational political economy, it provides a systematic analysis of the implementation of the idea of active inclusion and breaks new ground by detailing how divergent interpretations in different contexts derive from the interplay between domestic institutional assets and the choices made by relevant political and social actors.
1.2 Ideas and Capitalism
Ideational elements have increasingly entered the debates over the political economic changes of contemporary capitalism. Since the 2000s, a relevant part of scholarship has introduced us to the role of ideas, their relationship with institutions and actors and their capacity to affect policymaking and socio-institutional change (Béland 2005, 2016; Campbell 2004; Schmidt 2002, 2011). This literature shows that ideas have a key function in building coalitions and interests, shaping political processes and policymaking and determining stability and change in contemporary societies. Ideational forces, enduring modes of thought and discourses, informed by underlying cultures, ideologies and values, and promoted by policy entrepreneurs, explain the production and legitimisation of specific policies and the revision of political objectives (Blyth 2002; Schmidt 2008; Ban 2016).
Some pioneers of this approach can already be found in the 1970s (King 1973; Heclo 1974) but it is during the 1990s, with the stream of research on historical institutionalism (Hall 1989) and especially with the new contributions on discursive institutionalism (Schmidt and Radaelli 2004; Schmidt 2008), that the role of ideas and the acknowledgement of their power become established in the literature.
Since then, an increasing number of scholars have argued that we can no longer fail to take ideas into account in our analyses: ideas matter and shape policy in more fundamental ways than we might realise.
However, to take ideas seriously, first, we have to make sure we know what we mean by ideas and what exactly we are discussing when we talk about them. Secondly, we have to be able to study how ideational processes concretely affect policy decisions and policy implementation through systematic and rigorous empirical analysis (Béland 2016; Campbell 2004; Schmidt 2008).
As for the definition of ideas, or more particularly policy ideas, in the classifications and typologies that have been identified and discussed in the literature so far, some common elements can be traced that can be considered as their essential components. Almost all scholars would agree on defining ideas as developed mental constructions, such as beliefs and explanations, that are shared by individuals, collective or institutional actors, and that incorporate principles, values and assumptions about how the social, economic and political reality around us works (Béland and Cox 2011; Campbell 2004; Hall 1993).
These ideas are potent enough to influence political struggle, to propagate a vision of the world in the public debate, diagnose problems, find solutions and shape the decision-making process. This means that a key feature of such ideas is that they are not mere opinions, perceptions or attitudes shared by individuals, but rather deep-rooted and structured historical constructions; they are grounded on prevalent political ideologies, policy paradigms and social or economic theories, or are embedded in dominant public attitudes, national cultures and understandings (Campbell 2004; Dobbin 1994; Hall 1993). Simplifying the definition, ideas are concepts that help to make sense of what happens in the world and to identify the appropriate strategy/policy to solve a problem. An idea is endowed with a collective dimension, since it is shared by a group of people, within a community, which can be, for instance, a social group, a network of experts, a national institution or an international organisation. An idea contains a cause–effect explanation for a problem, and a cognitive assumption, based on a theory, a hypothesis, or a method. Finally, it has a normative dimension, which motivates or influences people and guides action (Braun and Capano 2010).
An overarching set of ideas, defined as frames, belief systems and paradigms, aims to reduce complexity, to direct attention to particular issues and enact choices. Competing and conflicting ideas remind us, however, that political struggle and competition start from ideas, and ideas influence the definition of problems but also the goal of policies and the instruments that can be used to attain them. As Hall (1993) argues in his study of institutional change, policy paradigms can enhance adjustments in the setting or level of the instruments used to achieve objectives of policy—what he calls first order change. However, as second order change, they can boost new types of policy instruments, leaving the hierarchy of goals behind policy unchanged. Policy paradigms can also provoke a shift in the goal behind policy, in addition to the shift in the type and setting of policy instruments, which gives us third order change. While first and second order changes are defined as incremental policymaking, the third reflects a radical change that Hall calls paradigm shift.
In order to explain the relation between ideas, socio-economic policies and institutional change, John Campbell (1998) detects four ways in which ideas manifest. First, ideas become observable as “cognitive programs” with a prescriptive function which guides decision-making and the action of political actors. All the recommendations, best practices and policy targets provided, for instance, by various international organisations (i.e. World Bank, International Monetary Fund, EU, OECD) to influence domestic policy reform, and even the functioning of national economic institutions, can be included in this group.
Second, ideas may represent a “cognitive paradigm” which limits the possible range of policy options and solutions for decision makers. Economic ideas, for instance, can represent a series of background assumptions and theories that orient economic governance in a certain direction, affecting policymak...