Max Koch

Roads to Post-Fordism. Labour Markets and Social Structures in Europe

Contents: Preface Introduction Inclusion, exclusion, and capitalism The Regulation Approach New directions in comparative research into labour markets and social structures The country studies Summary of empirical results from a comparative perspective Concluding remarks References Index.

Building the Eco-social State: Do Welfare Regimes Matter?

Authors such as Dryzek, Gough and Meadowcroft have indicated that social-democratic welfare states could be in a better position to deal with development of the ‘green’ or ‘eco’state, and the intersection of social and environmental policies, than conservative or liberal welfare regimes (synergy hypothesis). However, this hypothesis has as yet not been examined in comparative empirical research. Based on comparative empirical data from EUROSTAT, the World Bank, the OECD, the Global Footprint Network and the International Social Survey Programme, we are carrying out two research operations: First, by applying correspondence analysis, we contrast the macro-structural welfare and sustainability indicators of thirty countries and ask whether clusters largely follow the synergy hypothesis. Second, we raise the issue of whether differences in the institutional and organisational capabilities of combining welfarewith environmental policies are reflected in people’s attitudes and opinions. With regard to the first issue, our results suggest that there is no ‘automatic’ development of the ecostate based on already existing advanced welfare institutions. Representatives of all welfare regimes are spread across established, deadlocked, failing, emerging and endangered ecostates. As for the second issue, the results are mixed. While responses to the statements ‘economic growth always harms the environment’ and ‘governments should pass laws to make ordinary people protect the environment, even if it interferes with people’s rights to make their own decisions’did not vary according to welfare regimes, people from social-democratic countries expressed more often than average their willingness to accept cuts in their standard of living in order to protect the environment. (Less)

Welfare after Growth: Theoretical Discussion and Policy Implications

The article discusses approaches to welfare under no-growth conditions and against the background of the growing significance of climate change as a socio-ecological issue. While most governments and scholars favor “green deal” solutions for tackling the climate crisis, a growing number of discussants are casting doubt on economic growth as the answer to it and have provided empirical evidence that the prospects for globally decoupling economic growth and carbon emissions are very low indeed. These doubts are supported by recent contributions on happiness, well-being and alternative measures of measuring prosperity, which indicate that individual and social welfare is by no means equivalent to GDP growth.If the requirements of prosperity and welfare go well beyond material sustenance, then approaches that aim to conceptualize welfare under the circumstances of a “stable state economy” become more relevant. A qualitatively different environmental and welfare policy governance network would need to integrate the redistribution of carbon emissions, work, time, income and wealth. Since social policies will be necessary to address the emerging inequalities and conflicts, this article considers the roles that the various “no-growth” approaches dedicate to social policy and welfare instruments. (Less)

Wage Determination, Socio-Economic Regulation and the State

This article examines changes in socio-economic regulation and the role of the state in the Netherlands, Spain, the UK, Sweden and Germany, against the background of the theoretical debate on transition from Fordist to post-Fordist growth strategies. The first focus is on reforms in the labour market and the welfare state, and their effect on the political and social processes through which wage norms are generalized in a national economy. The second is on the changing role of the state as an institutional form. The article starts from some basic assumptions of the regulation approach and delineates the status of the concepts of wage relation and wage determination, on the one hand, and the state, on the other. It then considers the debate over modifications to these concepts in the transition from Fordist to post-Fordist growth strategies, drawing on the trajectories of the five countries.

The State in European Employment Regulation

Abstract The aim of the paper is to examine the changing role of the state in employment regulation in an environment that has become more market‐driven and Europeanized since the introduction of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the European Employment Strategy (EES). The point of departure is a general discussion of the role of the state in capitalist development and a review about the recent debate on the spatiality of state regulation. It further suggests different ways in which the state shapes employment relations along the following dimensions: as employer, as legislator, as guarantor of employment rights and procedural regulator, in intermediating neo‐corporatist processes, in macro‐economic management, and as a welfare state. From this theoretical basis, the paper identifies changes in state strategies within employment regulation by comparing two periods of European integration: the post‐war period and the ongoing period after the introduction of the EMU and the EES. In conclusion, the paper asserts that there has been a transition in the ways the state ‘intervenes’ in the economy and shapes the different dimensions of employment relations from a governing and legislating mode towards a steering and advising one.

Climate Change, Capitalism and Degrowth Trajectories to a Global Steady-State Economy

Climate change (CC) is one of the major and most encompassing threats in the world today. While the facts and high-consensus predictions among natural scientists are increasingly well-known, the understanding of CC as a socio-ecological issue is much less clear and uncontroversial. This paper summarizes the available climate science expertise and then discusses the genesis of CC as a socio-ecological issue highlighting its parallel development with capitalism. It moves on to review institutional approaches to study the link between capitalist diversity and greenhouse gas emissions and outlines future research directions with emphasis on a possible reconciliation of Marxian and “degrowth” thought. Due to the lacking evidence for absolute decoupling of economic growth, material resource use and carbon emissions it is argued that all societies, whether socialist or capitalist, will need to deprioritize economic growth as policy goal in the course of the twenty-first century. International critical thought should be dedicated towards analyzing the structural challenges and opportunities in building a global steady-state economy as well as associated post-growth societies.

Patterns of institutional change in minimum income protection in Sweden and Germany

Germany is generally regarded as a case of qualitative “change” in minimum income protection (MIP) schemes, while Sweden is perceived as one of institutional “inertia”. This paper seeks to qualify this view by embedding developments in MIP in wider policy and governance trends. Empirically, it is based on document analysis and qualitative expert interviews in the two countries. Theoretically, the paper applies recent institutional approaches that address patterns of change in more complex ways. In Sweden, an exclusive focus on formal continuity regarding social assistance would disguise its change in function from temporary security system of last resort into one that permanently provides income protection when neighboring policy fields, unemployment and sickness insurance, are downsized. Conversely, in Germany a merger of social assistance and unemployment assistance took place. Yet an exclusive focus on the Hartz reforms would downplay the degree of continuity that nevertheless exists in the unemployment insurance.

Conclusion: Non-Standard Employment : Concept, Empirical Results and Policy Implications

This volume has collected a range of theoretical, empirical and policy-oriented contributions that all illuminate patterns of destandardization of post-war employment structures. Some chapters have also identified elements of restandardization processes. Each chapter illustrates that general and fixed definitions of social standards are problematic. Instead, these agreements are always dynamic and open and depend in their outcome on social struggles between various groups in different arenas and on different scales. When embedding the development of employment standards into wider theories of standardization and diversity (Koch et al., 2011), social standards are generally comprehensible as temporary compromises subject to change — despite the fact that we tend to perceive these as ‘natural’ if these compromises have been in place for as long a period of time as the Fordist compromise. Bringing together arguments from authors like Weber (1978), Parkin (1979), Bourdieu (1986) and Brenner (2004), standards are best seen as institutional arrangements or compromises between powerful social groups that were agreed in a particular period of time and on a particular scale (local, national or transnational). These arrangements involve the exclusion of others who have an interest in usurping the existing arrangement and replacing it with a different one. At the same time, the interests of specific groups that supported the original compromise can change, leading to the removal of the original arrangement (Koch in Chapter 2).

Employment Standards in Transition: From Fordism to Finance-Driven Capitalism

In a recent historical overview of theoretical concepts of processes of standardization and diversification, Mark Elchardus (2011) demonstrates that these have varied considerably over time. Some theorists, like Max Weber or George Ritzer, saw society as moving towards ever-increasing standardization; other commentators, like Theophile Gautier or John Stuart Mill, strongly defended and gave preference to individuality, flexibility and sociocultural diversity, distancing themselves from any standardization of social action. In attempting to overcome such extreme views, Elchardus examines the interrelation between standardization and flexibility/diversity and argues that it does not make sense to talk of any one of these in isolation, without reference to its counterpart. In contrast, the existence of and the respect for generally agreed economic and social standards is normally the precondition of flexibility and diversity and define their scope. Chaos and disintegration both at the system and social level (Lockwood, 1992) would be the likely result without such agreements on social standards.

Introduction: Changing Employment Standards in a Crisis-ridden Europe

On 15 September 2008 the investment bank Lehman Brothers was not too big to fail and in the end filed for bankruptcy; the Dow Jones fell by about 500 points. What started as a banking crisis caused by toxic mortgagebacked assets and derivatives turned into a credit crunch as banks refused to lend money even to each other, soon reached the real economy and took its toll on public budgets. Four years on, the crisis continues with unemployment standing at about 10 per cent in EU27. Young people, particularly in the Southern European countries, are especially hard hit. According to EUROSTAT data from autumn 2012, nearly every fourth European under 25 years of age is unemployed (Ploetz, 2013). The fact that the economic crisis occurred is not entirely surprising given the relative detachment of finance assets from real value creation. Debt bubbles originated from the combination of low interest rates, rapidly rising household debt and wors-ening ratios of money borrowed for mortgages to down payments. Although real wages have stagnated in recent decades, people were, nonetheless, motivated to ‘borrow and consume as if their incomes were improving’ (Stiglitz, 2010: 2), in order to keep demand levels stable. However, as Robert Boyer warned as early as 2000, an equity-based regime depends on monetary policies that control financial bubbles, since the risk always exists that the diffusion of finance may push the economy towards structural instability (Boyer, 2000).