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Shifting the Employment Burden: The Social and Economic Foundations of Welfare State Reform

Powell, Scott R.
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1325176807

Abstract Details

2011, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, Political Science.
This dissertation examines how governments in advanced industrial nations are redefining the social contract through structural transformation of the welfare state, particularly the reform of employment promotion policies. By placing the unemployed back into the labor market, employment promotion not only provides individuals with a source of income, but it also helps to reduce welfare state costs and expand the tax base. Thus, these policies are seen as a sustainable form of social protection by domestic governments and international organizations alike. Yet, methods of employment promotion have changed over time and have varied substantially across countries, particularly in regard to who bears the primary responsibility for finding employment. While some governments have devoted substantial resources to job placement policies, through which the government bears the primary cost and responsibility for employment, many others have reformed employment promotion in such a manner that dramatically shifts employment responsibility onto. I use a two-level argument to demonstrate that the extent and variation in this shift in employment responsibility is rooted both in cleavages within labor markets based on employment risk, as well as in the power of labor unions to enforce workers' demands. At the individual level, I argue that workers' policy preferences are driven by their future employment expectations. Using a formal model of employment policy preferences, I demonstrate that, by contrast to the dominant models of the welfare state, employment risk is a multi-dimensional concept, defined jointly by a worker's job security and reemployability in the event of job loss. Utilizing this multi-dimensional definition of employment risk, I hypothesize that workers with higher skill levels, and those employed in the service sector, should perceive less risk than their lower-skilled and manufacturing sector counterparts. Analysis of employment policy preferences in 13 European countries confirms that these post-industrial cleavages indeed divide worker preferences for employment policies. Having identified the primary cleavages in policy preferences, I develop a new conception of power resource theory to explain how these divisions produce meaningful structural reforms in employment policies that shift the responsibility for finding work from government to individuals, who are increasingly responsible for reemployment. I build on the classic power resource notion that unionized workers are more capable of influencing political outcomes, but I depart from the conventional view that all unionized workers are locked in a class struggle and united in their pro-welfare preferences. Rather, I argue that distributional cleavages extend to all workers and that reforms are shaped by the relative power of high employment risk workers. Accordingly, the extent to which labor market reforms shift the employment burden to individuals is shaped by the degree to which workers who are both unionized and have low employment expectations comprise a greater proportion of the labor force. Analysis of data on the restructuring of employment policies in 18 OECD countries confirms that risk-based distributional cleavages both within the labor force as well as within the union movement play a crucial role in government decisions to shift responsibility to individuals for finding employment.
Sarah Brooks (Committee Chair)
Marcus Kurtz (Committee Member)
Irfan Nooruddin (Committee Member)
165 p.
Political Science; Public Policy
labor policy; welfare; risk; unions; dissertation

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Powell, S. R. (2011). Shifting the Employment Burden: The Social and Economic Foundations of Welfare State Reform [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1325176807

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Powell, Scott. Shifting the Employment Burden: The Social and Economic Foundations of Welfare State Reform. 2011. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1325176807.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Powell, Scott. "Shifting the Employment Burden: The Social and Economic Foundations of Welfare State Reform." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1325176807

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.