Geoffroy Matagne

The Future of Belgian Federalism: An Analysis of Party Preferences

This article studies the political discourses regarding the future of Belgian federalism since the year 2000. Analysing party manifestos, it intends to identify patterns of preferences about the long-term evolution of Belgian institutions and the distribution of competences. The quantitative and qualitative analysis shows that the systemic duality of Belgian federalism largely explains the preferences of political actors: French-speaking parties overall oppose the broad state reform that the Dutch-speaking parties collectively support. Yet, each party has a specific position on the decentralization cleavage and a vision of Belgian federalism that cannot be reduced to its linguistic affiliation.

The trouble with the local in Congo: the challenges of multi-level peacebuilding initiatives

Abstract While agreeing largely with the authors compelling argument about how a dominant peacebuilding ‘paradigm’ shaped the intervention strategy in a way that did not address local conflicts directly and specifically, this commentary discusses the notion of ‘locality’ and the links between the local and the national in the Democratic Republic of Congo that have implications both for the diagnosis and the recommendations for achieving lasting peace in the country. It argues that local actors are often deeply immersed in national and regional dynamics and contingencies. It also questions recent or current developments that may show that new agendas and discourses are emerging. At the level of the international peacebuilding and cooperation actors, a few developments may be indicative of a potential – if still tentative – change in approach. More operational issues and questions are raised by way of a conclusion. Even if new discourses and agendas are emerging, there are still serious obstacles to coherent multi-level strategies. The advocacy of concrete and convincing alternatives is often the key to effective policy reforms. Further research should therefore focus on the elaboration of a new toolkit for multi-level peacebuilding initiatives.

Book Review: Bernhard Ebbinghaus, Reforming Early Retirement in Europe, Japan and the USA. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2006, 331 pp., £50.00 (hbk), ISBN 0199286116:

Early exit from work has been a significant phenomenon in OECD countries since the 1970s, and reducing the incidence of early retirement has become a major issue in current reform debates at national and international levels. This book by Bernhard Ebbinghaus is devoted to explaining the general trends of early exit, its timing, and crossnational differences in exit trajectories. The book is divided into three parts. The first part, ‘Exploring Interests and Institutions’, presents the theoretical framework of the study. Chapter 2 is devoted to the presentation of a theoretical framework for the analysis of interest organization and intermediation at the micro-level (workers, employers, and workers’ representatives at workplace-level) and macro-levels (the state, employers, and unions). Ebbinghaus makes the point that the potential collusion of interests between social partners is linked to the institutional environment. The next chapter is therefore logically devoted to building a heuristic tool based on a combination of institutional typologies. Drawing on and combining typologies focused on The Three Worlds of Welfare (Esping-Andersen), the Varieties of Capitalism (Hall and Soskice), and the ‘three modes of interest intermediation’ (Crouch), Ebbinghaus outlines the main cross-national differences in, respectively, welfare state regimes (which he calls ‘regimes of protection’), social systems of production (‘regimes of production’) and labour relations (‘partnerships institutions’). He argues that there are ‘institutional affinities’ between particular regimes of protection, production, and partnership institutions, which he refers to as the ‘early exit triangle’. Analysing ten theoretically selected OECD cases, he detects fives clusters with corresponding consequences for employment regimes: Germany and the Netherlands (Centre countries: Conservative ‘welfare without work’ problem); France and Italy (Latin: Latin clientelist pensioner states); Sweden and Denmark (Nordic: Scandinavian full-employment goal); the UK, Ireland and the US (Anglophone: Anglophone flexible labour market); Japan (Asian: Japanese tenure employment model). In the second part, ‘Comparing Early Exit Regimes’, the author confronts hypotheses about the consequences of these ‘institutional affinities’ for early exit trajectories with the evidence collected from a cross-national comparison of early exit policies. Assuming the interaction between protection, production, and partnership institutions, these empirical chapters present several interlinked theses. According to the protection-related pull thesis, welfare regimes shape the incentives for older workers to quit working early and affect firms’ opportunities to externalize restructuring costs via early retirement. Therefore, regime-specific variations of available exit pathways account for a part of the cross-national variations in early exit from work. Following the production-related push thesis, the social partners or firms provide their own exit pathways and engage in ‘labour-shedding’ strategies. Variations in production regimes partly explain the different ways in which firms shed older workers (market-driven cyclical downsizing, systemic restructuring, etc.). Yet neither a protection nor a production-oriented approach can explain cross-national variations alone, because ‘employers and workers representatives at both national and workplace levels are crucial actors mediating between pull and push’ (p. 251). They adapt and try to influence the protection-related incentives and production-related exigencies. This partnership-oriented dimension is presented as the ‘missing link’ in many accounts of early retirement. The third part of the book is devoted to the analysis of opportunities for, and obstacles to, reform. Ebbinghaus argues that the multiple exit pathways and the number of actors make policy reversal very difficult. He stresses the potential for substitution effects as actors search for second-best alternatives, for cost-shifting between programmes, and the relative independence between pull incentives and push factors as far as reforms are concerned. Reversing early exit policies therefore requires a plethora of measures to alter the protection-induced pull and to lower the production-related push. With variations explained by different problem loads and opportunity structures, governments have used five main policy instruments: (a) raising the statutory pension age; (b) recalibrating disability insurance; (c) closing special early retirement programmes; (d) shifting from passive to active labour market policies; and (e) fostering gradual pensions and extended part-time work. Reflecting on these past experiences, the end of Chapter 7 and the Conclusion look into the obstacles to policy reversal (notably unintended consequences, social expectations, and pathdependence), the cross-national reform patterns, and the conditions of path departure.