The political economy of Public Employment Services: measurement and disempowered empowerment?

ABSTRACT

Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) and Public Employment Services (PES) are related components of the European Union and member state labour market policy. Typically, PES are analysed in terms of a narrow concern with efficiency and effectiveness of service. In this paper, we argue that PES are constituents in broader processes. They are not just means to facilitate employment, they are also part of transmission mechanisms for a political economy of competitiveness. They play a particular role in governance processes, and so serve to produce and reproduce power relations that are intrinsic to those processes. We argue that the technical ways that PES have been managed over recent decades has contributed to broader processes of disempowering labour, through depoliticized management practices. We argue that attempts at even limited re-empowerment of labour would require a repoliticization of these management practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Political economy
• Public Employment Services
• the European Union
• governance
• scale

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Alex Nunn is Professor of Global Political Economy at the University of Derby, where he is also Head of the Social, Cultural and Legal Research Centre. His research focuses on inequalities and he has undertaken a large number of applied social research projects related to Public Employment Services. His most recent publications feature in Critical Social Policy, Third World Thematics, British Politics, Journal of Australian Political Economy and Social Policy and Society. He serves as a member of the Steering Group for the International Political Economy Group of BISA, is a former IPEG convenor and Series Editor of the Lynne Rienner Advances in IPE book series. He is also on the Editorial Board of Capital and Class.

Jamie Morgan is Professor of Economic Sociology at Leeds Beckett University. He coedits the Real-World Economics Review with Edward Fullbrook. He has published widely in the fields of economics, political economy, philosophy, sociology, and international politics. His recent books include Realist Responses to Post-Human Society: Ex Machina (ed. with I. Al-Amoudi, Routledge, 2018); Brexit and the Political Economy of Fragmentation: Things Fall Apart (ed. with H. Patomäki, Routledge, 2018); Trumponomics: Causes and Consequences (ed. with E. Fullbrook, College Publications, 2017); What Is Neoclassical Economics? (ed. Routledge, 2015); and Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-first Century (ed. with E. Fullbrook, College Publications, 2014).

ORCID

Alex Nunn http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1362-2170

Notes

1 See http://ec.europa.eu/social/main.jsp?langId=en&catId=105&newsId=1827&furtherNews=yes.

2 For a review of creaming and parking and other problems in the operation of PES PM, see (Nunn 2012, 8). For a review of the various advantages and disadvantages of different types of measure see (Nunn 2012, 13, Table 2).

3 Danish municipalities are also likely to measure these activities.