The political discourse on labour market policy, in particular on activation and inclusion, is revealed by party manifestos. It is unlikely that domestic parties do share a view on welfare reforms that is similar to the EU. The more national parties do refer to activation policies the more receptive the national governments are expected to be for welfare reform through activation. Hence in order to understand the diversity of national responses to the activation strategies of the EU it is essential to know how domestic parties respond. In this research the focus is on the salience and the dimensionality of activation policies in election manifestos in 20 OECD countries. It is hypothesised that party ideology, welfare regimes and EU membership impact on the salience of activation policies in manifestos and (indirectly) account for national variations in the implementation of these policies by national governments.
Since the 1980s issues of work and welfare have become ever more connected to processes of European integration, a process that strengthens the opportunities for EU social policy agenda setting. Until now the preference-formation on activation policies has mainly been studied at the level of the EU and its member states. The degree to which domestic parties incorporate activation policies in their manifestos signals the extent to which these issues have reached the domestic political agenda. Until recently very little attention has been given to the political controversies that have been fuelled by these issues. The success and failure of Labour Market Activation is largely dependent on how it is put on the political agenda because this affects the degree of public and political support and hence the legitimacy of the democratic decision-making on these issues.
Whereas the dominant policy oriented approach of Labour Market Activation mainly focuses on the policy ‘output’ (i.e. policy decisions), this analysis concentrates on the political ‘input’ (preference formation and agenda-setting). It starts from the puzzle or problem to what extent a new European social model is becoming prevalent in the discourse of political parties in different institutional settings (welfare regimes, party families) and time periods? This research analyses the salience of eight activation policies over time using automated content analysis in order to examine the patterned variations in the party discourse on reforms. It will be shown that in particular the type of welfare regime and the left-right ideology have an impact on the saliency of issues related to activation, but also that parties are reluctant to put them prominently on the political agenda.
