Capitalising the Crisis? Explanatory factors for the design of short-time work across OECD-countries

Although all OECD member states were facing similar challenges during the international financial and economic crises 2008-2010, their policy reactions to the crisis varied greatly. Reacting to the slump of world trade and soaring unemployment, most OECD-countries launched short-time work (STW) schemes to cushion the impact of the economic and financial crisis on the labour market. This paper seeks to investigate explanatory paths for the subsidisation of further education within these programmes. Hypothesis for plausible causal pathways are derived from three approaches. Firstly, the classical partisan difference hypothesis of generous left-wing subsidisation is put to the test. Secondly, we consider the Varieties of Capitalism-approach that proposes that both, the structure of economic coordination and the structure of skill profiles suitable for labour markets, vary so greatly between countries that some governments will be in the functional need to subsidise while others will regard public contributions as less important. Finally, a claim merging these two perspectives is inquired into: Right-wing parties in a coordinated economic context might subsidise the regarded programmes since they feel under the pressure to overcompensate an 'issue ownership' of left parties in the field of employee-friendly policies. A sample of 16 OECD-countries that had introduced STW by 2008 is regarded. Via Fuzzy Set-QCA (a Boolean-logic based method especially suited for small samples) it is checked whether any explanatory factors or configurations of explanatory factors may be regarded as necessary or sufficient conditions for the subsidies under regard. Five explanatory paths are identified. They show that the partisan hypothesis cannot be upheld whereas two paths include economic coordination as an explanatory factor and right-wing overcompensation occurs in two cases with relatively closed economies.