Motives, means and opportunities: Reforming unemployment compensation in the 1990s

This discussion of developments in unemployment compensation in three European welfare states in the 1990s argues that the introduction of obligatory activation policies particularly for young unemployed people in the UK and Denmark indicates an important type of welfare reform which is difficult to classify as either retrenchment or expansion. While Germany has also moved some way in the same direction, a similar restructuring has not occurred. Reasons for these differences are explored and it is argued that their understanding needs to take account of three interrelated aspects: motives of policy makers, the means which enable and constrain policy making (largely institutional contexts within which social security systems operate) and opportunities. A somewhat messy concept, the latter is influenced by a range of contingent factors conferring legitimacy on welfare reform.