A (European) Road Towards Activation? National Adaptation to the European Employment Strategy: Italy and France Compare

1. A (European) Road Towards Activation?National Adaptation to the European Employment Strategy: Italy and France Compared Second ASPEN/ETUI Conference - Activation and Security Stream “The Institutional Set-Up of Activation and Security Measures” Faculty of Social Studies Mazaryk University, BRNO March 20-21, 2009 Paolo R. Lovegrove Graziano Bocconi University, Milano and Sciences-Po Paris

2. Presentation outline • EES and National Welfare State Change • Research Design • Methodology • EU pressures and national policy changes • Policy evolution at EU and national level • Explaining differential policy changes • Conclusion

3. EES and National WS Change • ‘Traditional’ focus of comparative WS literature: • WS regimes (Esping Andersen, 1990) • WS ‘new’ politics (Pierson, 2001) • WS recalibration (Ferrera and Hemerijck, 2003) • ‘New’ focus on Europe and WS Change: • WS compliance (Falkner and others, 2005) • OMC and National Employment and Social Inclusion (Zeitlin and Pochet, 2005) • Europeanization of social protection (Kvist and Saari, 2007)

4. Europeanization and WS change: where is the link? • WS literature has been traditionally interested in the national dimension and has primarely focused on aggregate social expenditure data • ‘Evocative’ use of Europeanization in recent WS literature • Further need to set the link between Europeanization (i.e. national adaptation to Europe) and national WS evolution.

5. Analysing WS change • WS change has often been studied in relation to social expenditure (see Esping Andersen, 1990 – and many others) • More recently, WS change = overall policy change (possible ‘paradigmatic change’ à la Hall, 1993; Culpepper, Hall and Palier, 2006) • WS policy key dimensions: policy goals, policy domains and policy instruments, i.e. policy structure (objectives, principles, procedures and financial instruments)

6. Research Question and Design • Linking Europeanization (i.e. construction at the EU level and national diffusion of EU policies and institutions) and nationalWS change (i.e. in the national actors’ strategy in building EU policies and/or policy structure modifications connected to Europe ) • Three step research design: • A. EU policy analysis • B. National policy analysis (i.e., if applicable, description of dimensions of change) • C. Change/Immobilism explanation (if change or policy misfit detected)

7. Methodology • Who: key actors involved in the decision-making process • What: neoinstitutional process tracing (in particular, the historical variant of neoinstitutionalism: key feature is the timing and the sequencing of policy evolution) • When: since memory is weak, the timing of the research (in particular for interviewing purposes) is crucial. • How: policy document analysis (policy structure), newspaper analysis and semi-directive interviews with key informants (policy process) using positional method

8. The EES and Employment Policy Change in Italy and France • Case selection: Italy and France considered as different welfare state models, in particular with respect to public coverage of employment protection (Esping Andersen, 1990; Ferrera, 1996) • Basic research question: in the light of common external pressures, the result is policy convergence or differences still remain? • Methodology: neoinstitutional process tracing, through policy-making data collection (mainly communications, actions plans and recommendations) and about 20 interviews with key decision-makers at the EU and national level

9. The construction of EU policies • Italy: weak capacity of preference formation, representation and negotiation in the EU • France: strong capacity of preference formation, representation and (especially) negotiation in the EU • In sum: • Italy = EU policy taker • France = EU policy maker

10. French ‘traditional’ policy structure (before 1997) • objectives: poorly defined • principles: employment security • procedures: automatic • instruments: national, predominance of passive measures, medium-high overall unemployment protection expenditure (currently around 2,5% of GDP)

11. Italian ‘traditional’ policy structure (before 1997) • objectives: poorly defined • principles: employment security • procedures: discretionary • instruments: national, predominance of passive measures, low overall unemployment expenditure (currently around 1,2% of GDP)

12. EU policy structure (after 1997) • Policy structure: • objectives: quantified employment targets • principles: from four pillars (employability, entrepreneurship, equal opportunities, adaptability) to three overarching ones (full employment, quality and productivity, cohesion and an inclusive labour market) – i.e. flexibility first and flexicurity after 2007 • procedures: OMC (benchmarking, best practice approach, etc.), i.e. standardized ‘soft law’ • instruments: ESF (European Social Fund) • In sum: soft but continuous pressures towards activation policies

13. The new Italian policy structure (after 1997) • objectives: well defined (EES definition) • principles: flexicurity (Italian style, i.e. security for insiders, flexibility for former outsiders or newcomers) • procedures: increasingly automatic (although with a limited scope since unemployment protection measures are still limited) • instruments: both European and national, significant increase of active measures, limited overall increase unemployment protection expenditure

14. The new French policy structure (after 1997) • objectives: well defined (EES definition) • principles: employment security • procedures: automatic • instruments: both European and national, but still predominance of passive measures, constant overall unemployment protection expenditure

15. Explaining differential WS changes • In sum: limited convergence towards a common employment policy structure. • In search for an explanation: • EU policy construction style • the domestic politics of unemployment protection (i.e. partisan and trade union politics) • nature of European constraints and opportunities (being weak, they were more relevant in the cases of greater ‘policy misfit’ and high budget deficits – i.e. Italian case)

16. Conclusion • In both cases some changes have been registered… • …but France and Italy remain clearly different welfare states (with respect to unemployment protection) • European pressures (even if weak) make a difference, especially in those cases where there is a clear ‘policy misfit’… • …but the pressures must be connected to the EU policy construction style and the domestic politics of unemployment protection which ‘use’ quite differently European constraints and opportunities.