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      Call for Papers: Hierarchies of domesticity – spatial and social boundaries. Deadline for submissions is 30th September, 2024. Full details can be read here.

      Articles to be no longer than 6,000 words (excluding footnotes and bibliography) and submitted in two forms: an anonymised version in which all references to the authors’ institution and publications are omitted; and a full version including the authors’ titles and institutional affiliations. For complete instructions on style, formatting, etc., please consult: https://www.plutojournals.com/wp-content/uploads/WOLG-Instructions-for-Authors2023.pdf 

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      Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation

      Volume 4, Issue 1
       
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      • Abstract: found
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      Is Open Access

      From conflict to consensus: European neoliberalism and the debate on the future of EU social policy

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      Journal: Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation
      Publisher: Pluto Journals
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            Abstract

            This paper focuses on the debate on EU social policy from the 1980s to the present. It argues that neoliberals have retained and extended their hegemony in a changing discursive setting. In the 1980s, neoliberal ideas clearly dominated but there was also an anti-neoliberal position calling for a stronger ‘positive’ social integration in Europe. From the 2000s onwards, however, the situation has changed. The debate on social integration has shifted from an antagonist constellation, where those in favour of positive market-correcting social integration opposed those in favour of a predominantly negative economic integration, to a consensual constellation, where it is seen as common sense that social issues are important so long as they improve competitiveness and are regulated only at a national level. Since anti-neoliberal arguments have lost their pervasive power, neoliberal hegemony has become even more thorough. Under this regime, opponents of the Lisbon strategy of European neoliberalism are forced to participate in fragmented conflicts in separate policy fields. This obliges them to comment on detailed policy questions rather than on major integration issues, thus losing the opportunity to debate the major lines of EU integration. The context for discussing EU social policy perspectives is now twofold: long-term political visions of EU social policy are treated within a neoliberal consensus; whilst the envisioning of short-term policy, relating to national social policies is treated in European policy fields regulated by the Open Method of Coordination. Ambitions that are directed both at market-regulating policies and at the European level, fall through the lattice of the Lisbon strategy.

            Content

            Author and article information

            Journal
            Journal ID (doi): 10.13169
            Journal ID (publisher-id): workorgalaboglob
            Title: Work Organisation, Labour and Globalisation
            Publisher: Pluto Journals
            ISSN (Print): 1745641X
            ISSN (Electronic): 17456428
            Publication date (Print): Spring 2010
            Volume: 4
            Issue: 1
            Pages: 175-192
            Article
            Publisher ID: workorgalaboglob.4.1.0175
            DOI: 10.13169/workorgalaboglob.4.1.0175
            SO-VID: ca2f53c8-5ad9-44c6-be0c-d786a210db22
            Copyright © © Stefan Bernhard, 2010
            License:

            All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

            History

            ScienceOpen disciplines: Sociology,Labor law,Political science,Labor & Demographic economics,Political economics

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