Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Shifting the Employment Burden: The Social and Economic Foundations of Employment Policy Reform

本项目考察了发达民主国家就业政策的转变。由于最近的政策改革，发达民主国家现在在一个关键但经常被忽视的特征上存在显著差异：谁负责找工作。一些政府投入了大量资源，通过维持或扩大国家和社会对就业结果的责任的政策，直接帮助工人就业安置。相比之下，其他国家的政府通过缩减这种就业援助，同时增加失业者在求职过程中必须满足的要求，从而降低了政策成本。后一项改革不仅将寻找就业的成本和责任的更大份额转移给个人，而且从根本上改变了社会政策的更广泛性质。该项目试图通过根据工人面临的不同就业风险确定工人政策偏好的差异来解释寻找就业责任的变化，特别是在工会劳动力中。研究人员收集原始调查数据，以跟踪工人所经历的就业风险类型，并证明这种风险在塑造工人的社会政策偏好中所起的作用。分析的重点是德国的劳动力，德国已经实施了影响就业责任分配的重要改革。研究了两种类型的就业风险：与工作保障有关的风险和与再就业能力前景有关的风险。研究者将评估就业风险对工人偏好的影响，即政府或失业者应该在多大程度上承担找工作的责任。在先前研究的基础上，该项目还将评估劳工运动内部的分歧对公众支持政策改革的影响。这个项目做出了几个更广泛的贡献。通过确定基于就业风险的政策偏好的新划分，本研究将促进对分配冲突如何影响政策结果的理解。具体来说，它将展示两种就业风险（工作保障和再就业能力）的变化如何影响加入工会的工人的社会政策偏好，为政府在社会政策方面采取困难和造成损失的改革铺平道路。此外，该项目生成的原始数据集将允许其他学者研究就业政策偏好，并检查工会在后工业经济中的政治影响。通过关注社会政策目的的变化以及项目福利如何在整个社会中分配，本研究增强了对社会保险改革趋势的理解，以及对发达工业民主国家政府为公民提供社会保护程度的决定因素的理解。

This project examines the transformation of employment policies in developed democracies. As a result of recent policy reforms, developed democracies now vary markedly in a crucial yet often overlooked feature: who bears responsibility for seeking employment. Some governments have devoted substantial resources to directly assisting workers with job placement through policies that maintain or expand the state's responsibility and society's responsibility for employment outcomes. In contrast, other governments have reduced policy costs by scaling back such employment assistance and at the same time increasing the number of requirements that the unemployed must meet in the job search process. The latter reforms not only transfer to individuals a greater share of the cost and responsibility for finding employment, but fundamentally change the broader nature of social policies. This project seeks to explain shifts in responsibility for finding employment by identifying divisions in workers'' policy preferences based on the different employment risks facing workers, particularly within the unionized workforce. The researcher collects original survey data in order to track the types of employment risk experienced by workers, and demonstrates the role that this risk plays in shaping workers' social policy preferences. The analysis focuses on the labor force in Germany, where important reforms affecting the distribution of employment responsibility have been enacted. Two types of employment risks are examined: those relating to job security and those tied to the prospect of re-employability. The researcher will evaluate the effect of employment risk on workers' preferences about the degree to which the government or the unemployed should bear responsibility for finding employment. Building on prior research, the project will also assess the impact of divisions within the labor movement on public support for policy reform. This project makes several broader contributions. By identifying new divisions in policy preferences based on employment risk, this research will advance understanding of how distributional conflicts affect policy outcomes. Specifically, it will show how variation in two kinds of employment risk, job security and re-employability, shape the social policy preferences of unionized workers, making way for governments to adopt difficult and loss-imposing reforms in social policies. In additional, the original dataset generated by the project will allow other scholars to study employment policy preferences and to examine the political influence of labor unions in post-industrial economies. By focusing on changes in the purpose of social policies and how program benefits are allocated across society, this research enhances understanding of trends in social insurance reform and of determinants of the degree of social protection that governments provide citizens in advanced industrial democracies.