Imke Lammers

Efficiency or compensation? : The global economic crisis and the development of the European Union’s social policy

How has the global social policy agenda evolved since the global economic crisis? To shed light on this question, this article looks at the discourses in European Union (EU) social policy. It draws on two rival theoretical approaches from the literature on globalisation and the welfare state, the efficiency and compensation hypotheses, and links these approaches to two fundamental rationales underlying the discourse in EU social policy. Based on an analysis of key documents from two Open Methods of Coordination (OMCs), the article shows that the logic underlying the efficiency hypothesis can be extended to discourses in EU social policy. While policy debates in one OMC remained largely unchanged, the discourse significantly shifted towards the economic rationale during and after the crisis in the other OMC. This suggests that the crisis at least partly strengthened the view that social policy should be geared towards economic efficiency, growth, and the creation of jobs.

Grid resilience governance of the future: analyzing the role of associations in experimental smart grid projects in the Netherlands

Local generation decentralizes urban grids. Soon new actors, such as associations, might enter the traditional energy domain. As electrical grids are critical for society, new actors will need to collaborate with other city-level stakeholders to ensure proper grid functioning in times of crisis. Little research has been done about how this collaboration could look like for smart grid projects. This short paper presents for discussion initial analysis on how associations as new actors might approach establishing such collaborations to improve grid resilience. We focus on advances in Dutch governance related to local energy planning projects. First, we outline which stakeholders are currently concerned with grid resilience in the Netherlands. Then, we introduce how innovative smart grid projects can be organized and describe the role of associations within them. Finally, we apply the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IAD) to point out what associations might consider to improve grid resilience.