| Review of: | The European Employment Strategy: Labour Market Regulation and New Governance by D. Ashiagbor |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | Jörg Michael Dostal |
| Reviewed in: | Journal of Common Market Studies |
| Date accepted online: | 28/03/2007 |
| Published in print: | Volume 45, Issue 1, Pages 211-229 |
Book Reviews
Ashiagbor's point of departure is the assertion that the EU has turned away from the idea of harmonization of Member States' social policies. Rather than favouring an increased degree of supranational 'hard' law in the social policy field, which was at least contemplated by Delors and others during the run-up to Maastricht in 1992, policy-making instead shifted towards 'soft' law and increased intergovernmentalism in the so-called 'open method of co-ordination'. After the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997, a new 'European Employment Strategy' (EES) emerged that focused on neoliberal concepts of labour market flexibility and intervention on the supply side of the labour market, thereby ignoring other social policy concerns and neo-Keynesian macroeconomic alternatives.
The author suggests that employment and social policies at the EU level take place according to two opposing logics. First, Member States could opt for a logic of 'supranationalism plus regulation' or, alternatively, they could choose 'intergovernmentalism plus deregulation' (p. 306). Ashiagbor holds that the EES has been dominated by the second logic. The argument is put forward in six chapters. The first chapter on the 'economics of labour market regulation' outlines the theoretical argument in favour of regulatory intervention to increase economic welfare. It does so in the field of legal discourse rather than the political science context that will be more familiar to most readers. The author explains how neoclassical and new institutional approaches disagree on the role of regulatory legal intervention in the labour market. This first theoretical chapter is freestanding, while the remaining five chapters all concentrate on the EES with considerable overlap between each chapter. The argument mostly derives from official EES discourse as well as neo-Keynesian and trade union critiques of the EES. Overall, this is a study of elite discourse rather than of empirical policy-making.
In a central section the author demonstrates how three agendas compete for superiority at the EU level. First, a traditional social policy agenda stresses social dialogue and the representation of 'social partners' in the workplace; second, a more recent discourse on 'employability' focuses on macroeconomic competitiveness and supply-side reform; third, a new human and equal rights agenda aims to recapture some of the lost ground for the advocates of a social Europe.
Overall, Ashiagbor's promise to put forward a normative critique of EES policies only emerges fully in the last chapter and the concluding section. Many of her interesting points on legal regulation and social policy such as the careful limitation of the legal reach of the 'Charter of Fundamental Rights' in the 'Draft Constitution for Europe' that, according to the author, demonstrate an 'unwillingness to give constitutional status to economic and social rights' (p. 177) are hidden in the body of the text. Nevertheless, her carefully drafted book is bound to be a reference source on the EES for many years to come.