when is unemployment politically important? explaining differences in political salience across...

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When is unemploymentpolitically important?Explaining differences inpolitical salience acrossEuropean countriesPhineas Baxandall aa Lecturer in the Committee for Degrees inSocial Studies , Harvard University ,Published online: 03 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Phineas Baxandall (2001) When is unemployment politicallyimportant? Explaining differences in political salience across European countries,West European Politics, 24:1, 75-98, DOI: 10.1080/01402380108425418

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When is Unemployment PoliticallyImportant? Explaining Differences in

Political Salience Across European Countries

PHINEAS BAXANDALL

This article explores alternative hypotheses for variation in thepolitical salience of unemployment. The differences between thepolitical opinions of employed and unemployed people are used as aproxy for the qualitative importance of unemployment. Unemploymentis not found to be more politically salient when government support ofthe unemployed is more generous or when jobless spells are shorter.Far more important is the character of employment. Unemployment ismore politically salient in countries where employment guarantees abasic livelihood. The data also suggest that unemployment hasgreater salience in countries where the unemployed are more likely touse state employment exchanges in searching for work. Twoconclusions are suggested. First, public toleration of highunemployment in recent decades may be partly the result of the rise ofatypical work arrangements. Second, while it is debatable whethersocial-democratic protections of employment standards increaseunemployment rates, such efforts may inadvertently increase thepolitical costs of high unemployment.

The political cost of unemployment has long been at the centre of Europeandebates in political economy. Unemployment is a major criterion by whichpeople judge the competency of economic rule1 and it is considered adangerous cause of political dissatisfaction and unrest.2 In the immediatepost-war era, unemployment was considered politically unsustainable if itrose above four or five per cent. Scholars described governments asstrategically choosing their place along the Phillips Curve and oftenengaging in corporatist bargaining to avoid the dissatisfaction and unrestentailed by high unemployment.3 In recent decades, European governments,in particular, have struggled against the political fallout of higherunemployment.

A wide literature associates the erosion of political support witheconomic hardship, especially unemployment.4 Unemployment is regarded

West European Politics, Vol.24, No.l (January 2001), pp.75-98PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

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76 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS

as particularly dangerous for political stability, because it represents aremoval of both people's established livelihood and the chief regulatoryframework ordering their lives.5 Evidence suggests that the differences inthe political attitudes of the unemployed vis-à-vis the employed persist evenwhen controlled for other socio-economic factors associated withunemployment.6

Even though the political importance of unemployment is widelyacknowledged, we know little about how its political meaning varies indifferent times and places. Higher quantities of unemployment areassociated with greater political costs, but there has been little attention toother cross-national differences in how politically costly unemployment isto those in power. While it remains an issue of paramount politicalimportance, we have little understanding of why jobless rates that wereregarded as politically untenable after the Second World War are nowconsidered commonplace. More importantly, little consideration has beengiven to the question of why a higher rate in one country can carry lesspolitical cost than a lower rate in another. It has been noted that the sameunemployment rate in Britain may mean something very different fromwhat it would in Italy where the unemployed typically take part in familialand informal economic activities.7 But we lack a systematic way ofunderstanding these kinds of comparisons.

The prevailing approach in the comparative political economy ofunemployment has been to examine how politically induced rigiditiesprevent the market from driving joblessness down to its frictional minimum.Governments, in this view, wish to appear as if they are combatingunemployment, but interest group pressures and electoral logics dictate theeschewing of painful flexibility-enhancing reforms.8 Because the emphasishas been on the political obstacles to deregulation, liberalisation andretrenchment, there has been almost no attention to whether unemploymentposes a similar threat in different countries. As unemployment rates havebecome less similar across the industrialised world such a position hasbecome difficult to defend. In the United States, even at unemploymentrates below five per cent, the threat of increased unemployment preventslegislated wage minimums from rising even to their 1973 levels. Bycontrast, in the face of unemployment rates more than twice as high, Frenchpresidential candidates can credibly propose to increase the minimum wagefurther.9 Spanish unemployment remained at around 20 per cent for over adecade without major electoral consequences for the ruling party.10 Even inthe face of rising jobless rates, Swedish cuts in benefit rates in the early1990s led to subsequent electoral defeat and were largely reversed.

Europeans consistently identify unemployment as the political issuemost important to them, but their concerns about unemployment do not

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WHEN IS UNEMPLOYMENT POLITICALLY IMPORTANT? 77

correspond to differences in national unemployment rates." In 1990,Spanish unemployment stood at almost double the French rate (16.2 versus8.9 per cent), but significantly fewer Spaniards were likely to identifyunemployment as their most pressing political issue (55 per cent versus 89per cent). Simple regression analysis shows that a country's unemploymentrate explains less than two per cent of the variation in how highly citizensprioritise unemployment as a national political issue.12 Nor do the recentchanges over time in a country's unemployment rate show any discerniblerelationship with how the issue is prioritised.13 Clearly the quantitative rateof unemployment is an insufficient proxy for comparing its politicalsalience.14

This article is an initial attempt at remedying such shortcomings. Thenext section discusses how individual-level Eurobarometer data can providea useful proxy for approximating the comparative salience ofunemployment between European countries. A number of hypotheses arethen tested to explain these differences. The most obvious hypothesis is thatunemployment is more politically virulent when compensatory socialprotections are weak, or when the duration of jobless spells is longer. As weshall see, the evidence does not support these hypotheses. Another set ofhypotheses draws on the insight that unemployment is defined againstparticular norms of employment. To the extent that employment in acountry does not guarantee a basic livelihood, or does not resemble theprototypical ideal of a full-time industrial breadwinner, then unemploymentwill be less politically salient. Although the data is limited, it supports thishypothesis. The data also suggests that the more the unemployed use stateemployment exchanges in searching for work, the more likely they will beto blame the government for failure to find adequate employment.

MEASURING THE POLITICAL SALIENCE OF UNEMPLOYMENT

There are no accepted measures of the political salience of unemployment.15

The political importance of unemployment is not the same as merely theprominence of unemployment questions in national political debate or theintensity of disagreement over solutions. In a country where unemploymentis a pressing political problem, the issue might not appear as such in debatesif, for example, the problem is regarded as inevitable or preferable to itsalternatives. Moreover, it would be desirable to have an indicator of thepolitical quality of unemployment that would not automatically increase ordecrease along with the quantity of unemployment in a country.

One useful indicator of the political salience of unemployment can bederived from individual-level survey data. The standardisation of Europe-wide polling and increased levels of European unemployment have made it

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TABLE 1OPINION GAP IN DEMOCRATIC SUPPORT BY COUNTRY

Country Per cent of democratic support by the employedminus democratic support by the unemployed

BelgiumBritainDenmarkFranceGermanyGreeceIrelandItalyNetherlandsPortugalSpain

16.211.37.5

11.724.65.6

10.611.713.115.65.0

Source: C.J. Anderson, 'Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures? Unemployment andVoter Behavior in Comparative Perspective', Unemployment's Effects: The SouthernEuropean Experience in Comparative Perspective (Princeton University, 14—15 Nov.1997).

possible to reliably compare the employed to the unemployed in theirresponses to general political questions. We can test the salience ofunemployment with the help of a 1991-92 Eurobarometer data set,16

following the methodological lead of Christopher Anderson, who looksseparately at the responses of the unemployed and the employed to anumber of political questions. He finds a variety of ways that the politicalopinions of the unemployed differ from those in employment. This studyfocuses on the only significant difference that holds across each and everyEuropean country. There is considerable variation between countries in thetotal portion of respondents who claim to be satisfied or very satisfied withthe way democracy works in their country. But regardless of the overalllevel of 'democratic satisfaction' there is a consistent gap: the unemployedin each and every country are at least five per cent less likely to be satisfiedwith democracy than are the country's employed respondents.17

It is possible to compare the size of each country's opinion gap betweenthe employed and the unemployed in their support of the democraticsystem. This gap gives some indication of unemployment's politicalsalience for that country. Although Anderson does not use the data for thispurpose, we can infer that the more different the political views of theunemployed are from those of the employed, the more politically salientunemployment is in that country. The survey data is a blunt but useful toolas a first estimation. In fact it is difficult to imagine a hypothetical surveyquestion that would be superior. Even if the Eurobarometer askedrespondents to estimate for themselves 'how much they blamed thegovernment for unemployment', we could not rely on this kind of self-

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reporting. There are of course definite limits to using any individual opiniondata, since individual attitudes do not automatically aggregate into group ornational politics and any survey will have problems abstracting acrosscultural and institutional differences. But the data is nonetheless useful as areliable measure of the political quality of unemployment that is completelyindependent of the unemployment rate.

A quick look at the data suggests that it is consistent with generalimpressions of the salience of unemployment in national politics. In thecountries with the smallest attitudinal gaps, Spain and Greece, incumbentSocialist parties have repeatedly won elections despite very high urban ratesof unemployment. The countries with the largest opinion gaps, Belgium andGermany, have been racked by massive protests against unemployment.The relatively high gap in democratic support in Portugal is echoed by datashowing that the Portuguese unemployed are as almost twice as left-leaning(compared to the employed) than in any other surveyed country18 and havea particularly close relationship with the Portuguese Communist Party." Theexceptionally large opinion gap in Germany is perhaps exaggerated byreunification, which has created disproportionate unemployment in theformer German Democratic Republic, where there is also disproportionatepolitical disenchantment.

DATA ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION: FOUR HYPOTHESES

Hypothesis 1: The greater the policy effort exerted on mitigating the effectsof unemployment, the smaller will be the opinion gap between employedand unemployed.This is a more precise version of a similar question in an earlier paper byChristopher Anderson.20 Policy effort was measured by using socialspending as a portion of GDP or, alternatively, as total government spendingas a portion of GDP. Surprisingly, greater social spending did not diminishthe opinion gap in political support between employed and unemployed.But these global spending measures are imprecise indicators of support forthe unemployed. Some countries which spend a high proportion of theirGDP on total government expenditure or overall social spending mightfocus their energies on pensions, health or education instead of shelteringthe effects of unemployment. Various more specific measures of the state'seffort to aid the unemployed are therefore substituted. When greaterportions of the unemployed receive benefits or their benefit levels replace ahigher portion of their previous wages then the gap in democratic supportshould be correspondingly smaller. This hypothesis would be confirmed bya negative correlation coefficient between measures of unemployment aidand the gap in democratic support.

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There are strong reasons to suggest this hypothesis. The moregenerously the unemployed are treated, the less different they should befrom the employed. Historically, unemployment programmes have oftenbeen introduced by governments as a way to diffuse protest and buy offopposition.21 Przeworski argues that unemployment is especially dangerouswhere there is an inadequate social safety net because it represents a radicaluncertainty over basic livelihood. His statistical analysis on Polish publicopinion and various economic indicators reveals that, 'fear ofunemployment overwhelms the effects of all other economic variablescombined, and it makes people turn against the reform program'.22

TABLE 2RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN POLICY GENEROSITY TOWARD UNEMPLOYMENT

AND DIFFERENCES IN DEMOCRATIC SUPPORTBETWEEN EMPLOYED AND UNEMPLOYED

Measure of generosity toward the unemployed Correlation RegressionCoefficient (R-Square)

A. Index of the wage-replacement rate ofunemployment benefits1 +0.05 0.003

B. Per cent of unemployed who receiveunemployment benefits +0.31 0.098

C. Ratio of unemployment benefit recipientsto the number of those surveyed as unemployed2 +0.42 0.089

Notes:1. The OECD combines a number of composite measures to derive this overall average: OECD

Jobs Study, 1995, Table 8.1.2. This measure from the OECD 1994 Jobs Study (Table 8.4.B) compares the availability of

unemployment compensation across OECD countries. There is first an attempt to correct forsome of the different ways that survey answers are treated in different countries. The numberof unemployed people was then compared to the number who receive benefits to yield the'coverage rate' of the unemployed. At the top are many countries (such as Austria, Belgium,Canada, Denmark, Finland, Ireland, and the Netherlands) where the number of beneficiariesis actually higher than the number of unemployed. This is possible because the governmentsnot only extend benefits to job seekers without any work but also to people working part-time or in public works programmes, who do not count as officially unemployed but are notacceptably employed. In the middle are countries like France, Sweden and Germany wherethe number of beneficiaries is almost equal to the number of officially unemployed (98 percent, 89 per cent, and 93 per cent, respectively). On the other extreme side of the spectrumis the United States, where only 34 per cent of those who meet the definition of beingunemployed actually receive benefits. Accompanying the US was Greece at 30 per cent andPortugal at 36 per cent.

Source: OECD, The OECD Jobs Study: Evidence and Explanations (Paris: OECD 1995).

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Three measures of the generosity and scope of unemployment supportfor the unemployed are listed in Table 2 with their correlation coefficientsand regressed R-squared values. The results unexpectedly appear todisprove the hypothesis. It is not surprising that the relationship is veryweak, since we are asking much from so few observations. More surprisingis that the coefficient is positive in each case. Countries where policy treatsthe unemployed more generously have a greater gap in democratic supportbetween the employed and unemployed.

Hypothesis 2: The longer the average duration of unemployment spells, themore politically salient is unemployment.Perhaps differences in the size of the gaps in democratic support can beexplained by differences in the average duration of unemployment spells. Incountries where spells of unemployment are shorter, the unemployed shouldhave political views that are less different from the employed. Conversely,

FIGURE 1DIFFERENCE IN DEMOCRATIC SUPPORT VS. PERCENTAGE

OF LONG-TERM UNEMPLOYED

70

60 ••

o

t 5 0 ••

4 0 - •

o

Ic

30-

2 0 - -

10-

Ireland- • Belgium* Italy

. Greece

. France

Britain Portugal Germany •

• Denmark

R2 »0.0322

Correlation Coefficient = -0.18

t ft) Í*5 Í)Difference in Democratic Support (employed vs. unemployed)

25

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in countries where people move quickly in and out of jobs, unemploymentshould be of less political consequence. Akerlof3 and Feldstein24 have madethe similar argument that American unemployment should not be regardedas a serious problem because it mostly results from rapid churning betweenjobs rather than long spells without work. Considerable variation does existin the extent of long-term unemployment between European countries. Incountries such as Denmark, Portugal and Britain about 30 per cent of theunemployed had been jobless for over a year in 1990; this proportiondoubles to about 60 per cent in countries such as Belgium and Italy. Theresults of statistical analysis are demonstrated in Figure 1. This hypothesisalso clearly fails. Contrary to expectation the relationship is very weak andunexpectedly negative. Long-term unemployment does not correspond togreater political salience of unemployment.

What interpretations can be drawn from rejecting the first twohypotheses? The findings support a well-established political insight thatgoes back at least to Alexis De Tocqueville: that economic distress does notstraightforwardly translate into political consequences.25 Early research oncollective violence and protest presumed that rebellion grew directly out ofeconomic deprivation,26 but subsequent studies found that protest andcollective violence do not correlate with economic indicators of relativedeprivation. Economic deprivation leads to resistance only when injustice isperceived, when those who are deprived are mobilised, and when they seeopportunities for change.27 Far from inducing social turmoil, increasedunemployment may instead quell labour militancy by making workers morefearful of losing their jobs.28

A large body of research on political opinion and voting also supportsthe conclusion that individual economic circumstances do not directlydetermine political sentiment. People tend to view the state of the economybased on 'sociotropic' or collective evaluations,29 rather than 'pocketbook'or personal ones.30 Sociotropic effects have been shown in the relationshipbetween voting and unemployment.31 Indicators of perceived businessconditions are a consistently better predictor of votes32 than surveys ofpersonal financial well-being.33 Schlozman and Verba similarly found thatthose who lose their jobs generally 'did not see themselves as victims ofbroad social forces or governmental ineptitude but of specific eventsconnected with their particular employment circumstances'.34 Economicmisfortune itself does not automatically translate into blaming thegovernment. As Lewis-Beck concludes, '[T]he strength of pocket-bookvoting depends on the development of a particular pattern of causalreasoning about the responsibility for personal economic conditions'.35

Indicators of the salience of unemployment would be more useful if theytook into consideration the interpretive lens through which people

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understand its effects. Hypotheses three and four partially attempt toaddress these concerns.

Hypothesis 3: The political salience of unemployment depends on theprevailing character of employment. 3A: The more that employment securesa minimum livelihood the greater will be the political salience ofunemployment. 3B: The more employment is in industry the greater will bethe political salience of unemployment. 3C: The more prevalent is self-employment, the less will be the political salience of unemployment.If a country has a more significant portion of working poor, then having ajob does not imply income security and the distinction between having a jobor being unemployed is blurred. Wage norms and labour regulationsconstruct the meaning of unemployment through defining the content ofemployment. In the indices and scattergram below, the degree to whichemployment is generally a guarantee against poverty is measured. Theproportion of full-time workers who earn less than two-thirds of medianearnings is taken as a proxy for the incidence of working poverty.36 Thelarger the portion of workers earning such low pay the less significant is alack of employment and, it is hypothesised, the less politically salient willbe unemployment in that country. The strong negative correlationcoefficients and the scattergram below confirm this hypothesis. More low-paid employment correlates with less salience. These findings are evenstronger if, due to the exaggerating effects of German reunification, wewere to exclude Germany.37

In order to understand how unemployment is politically interpreted it isimportant to understand its prototypes and cognitive architecture. Not allthose without work are regarded as unemployed.38 And some kinds ofunemployment are regarded as more salient than others. Unemployment ismost meaningful when counterpoised against certain kinds of employment.The meaning and importance of unemployment have been historicallylinked to the emergence of industrial employment. Studies of individualWestern countries from the end of the nineteenth century to the GreatDepression describe how the concept, language and institutions of

TABLE 3LIVELIHOOD GUARANTEED BY EMPLOYMENT

Per cent of full time employees earning less than 66 per cent ofmedian earnings

Correlation Coefficient -0.54excluding Germany -0.78Regression (R-Square) 0.29excluding Germany 0.61

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FIGURE 2DIFFERENCE IN DEMOCRATIC SYUPPORT VS. LOW PAY (% WITH EARNINGS

< 66% oF MEDIAN WAGE

20

a 18

.2 16 +

'S 14v

I 12 t

s 10 to.

8 +BS 6

4 +

a 2

-I *

. . _ . BritainSpam

" \ ^ • Ireland

^ " ^ ^ I t a l y

* Franc

- •

1

+ Portlrgal^^^

Netherlands ^~~~-^

Belgium

R2 = 0.294

Correlation Coefficient =

1 1-

Germany

-0.54

5 10 15 20Difference in Democratic Support (employed vs. unemployed)

25

unemployment emerged alongside industrialisation.39 Unemployment, thesestudies point out, did not always exist. When work was slack in the earlyindustrial mills there was always farming to be done as well as thehousehold economy of one's relatives. As Michael Piore writes,

The modern concept of unemployment derives from one particularemployment relationship, that of the large, permanent manufacturingestablishment. Employment in such institutions involves a radicalseparation in time and in space from family and leisure time activityand was (and is) relatively permanent. When employment ties of thiskind are severed, there is an empty space in the worker's life which issharply defined and that space is what is meant by unemployment.40

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In post-war industrial capitalist economies, the prototypical unemployedperson has been an able-bodied, prime-age male industrial breadwinnerwith plant-specific skills who has been laid off from full-time formal workas the result of a plant closing in a declining industry. The moreunemployment resembles its industrial 'core' (or prototypical) form, themore salient unemployment is typically regarded as being.

The central or exemplary quality of industrial unemployment has anumber of concrete explanations. To start with, industrial workers aretypically the most difficult to reintegrate into the economy at other jobs andtheir families are most dependent on their continuous wages. Andrew Glyn,reflecting on why discussion of OECD unemployment tends to focus onindustry, makes the following argument:

So why should industrial jobs be singled out? The explanation is in thenature of industrial work. Traditionally in the OECD countries thishas been relatively well paid, mainly carried out by men, workingfull-time with skills that are specific to industrial work and requiringonly basic education as a prerequisite. Major declines in industrialemployment result in large-scale, geographically concentratedredundancies which flood local labour markets with less-educatedlabour.41

The fact that industrial workers are accustomed to being relatively wellpaid means that they do not easily enter unskilled work. It is difficult forthem to find other highly paid employment, because they only have skillsfor a particular type of work, which is unlikely to be available when plantsare closing and their industry is in decline. The interruption of work forprime-age workers is also more problematic than for older workers becausethey can rely less on family, do not have significant social security orsavings, and cannot go into early retirement programmes. Industrialemployment is also exemplary for unemployment because industrialworkers represent a particularly potent political threat to public order. Moreskilled workers tend to have higher expectations, and working in largeplants gives industrial workers relatively greater organisational capacity forlarge-scale political action. Industry carries additional political leveragebecause work stoppages may be particularly disruptive for the nationaleconomy.

For all these reasons we can hypothesise that the more a country'semployment is in industry, the more politically salient is unemployment.Agricultural employment dilutes the political salience of unemploymentbecause family farmers always have work to do and other agriculturalworkers tend to be casually attached to their jobs and habitually driftbetween seasonal work. In services and 'post-industrial' jobs the salience of

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FIGURE 3DIFFERENCE IN DEMOCRATIC SUPPORT VS INDUSTRIAL

PORTION OF EMPLOYMENT

40

„ 35 -•

"5.» 30 +

25 -•

20 - •

15

0 5 10 15 20 25

Difference in Democratic Support (employed vs. unemployed)

unemployment is diluted by a blurring of distinctions between the employedand non-employed that comes from greater prevalence of 'atypical' worksuch as sub-contracting, part-time work, home working and temporarycontracts.42

Figure 3 shows observed relationship between the salience ofunemployment and the portion of each country's labour force who areindustrial employees. The strongly positive correlation coefficient indicatesthat more industrialised employment corresponds to a greater politicalsalience of unemployment. The regression analysis suggests that almost 60per cent of the variation in unemployment's political salience can beexplained by the industrial portion of employment.

Further evidence suggests that a blurring of the distinction betweenemployment and non-employment corresponds to a diminishing ofunemployment's political salience. Self-employment makes unemploymentless politically salient by blurring the distinctions between labour forcecategories. In self-employment, there is typically little spatial or temporal

• Spain

freían*Denmark • ^ ^

« Greece

1 H

«Fiat

Britain

^Portugal

tee

• Belgium

Netherlands

•Germany

0.591

Correlation Coeff = 0.769

1 H

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FIGURE 4DIFFERENCE IN DEMOCRATIC SUPPORT VS SELF-EMPLOYED AND

UNPAID FAMILY WORKERS AS % OF LABOUR FORCE

35

30 •

25

yID•a

20

15

1 0 •

ï 5t

• Greece

' Spain

• Italy

Ireland

Britain ** France

• Belgium• Portugal

Denmark . ,• Netherlands

1

R : = 0.2042

Correlation Coefficient

-—^Germany

*

= -0.452

10 15 20

Difference in Democratic Support (employed vs unemployed)25

separation between work and non-work and it is highly arbitrary how todifferentiate the normal business-seeking activity of the entrepreneur fromthe active job-search of the nominally unemployed.43 We hypothesise thatgreater prevalence of self-employment and unpaid family workers should,all else equal, correspond to less distinct differences between employmentand unemployment - and therefore less political salience of unemploymentevidenced by a negative correlation coefficient. As predicted, Figure 4shows the relationship, though weak, is negative: more self-employmentcorresponds to less political salience.

Hypothesis 4: When the unemployed rely more on government labourexchanges to find jobs they are more likely to blame the government fortheir joblessness.There is wide variation in the ways the unemployed look for work indifferent European countries. In some countries, the local governmentallabour exchange offices serve as the primary channel for finding a job.

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TABLE 4METHODS OF JOB SEARCH AMONG THE UNEMPLOYED IN LABOUR FORCE SURVEYS

Only registered at exchange

Both registered and other methodPrivate employment officeDirect employer contactThrough the pressAsked friends, relativesOther methods

Only another methodPrivate employment officeDirect employer contactThrough the pressAsked friends, relativesOther methods

Belgium

12.3

76.811.525.427.77.05.2

10.91.33.24.11.5

Denmark

...

90.417.839.730.5

1.80.0

9.6

4.14.7

France

17.3

70.714.218.526.4

7.44.2

11.91.53.93.92.00.7

Germany

47.4

38.87.84.8

22.71.81.7

13.83.81.76.21.11.1

Greece

...

14.9

7.13.72.51.2

84.7

33.520.924.06.2

Ireland

5.6

66.715.714.326.310.20.0

27.74.45.3

12.94.9

Italy

41.5

50.61.3

13.51.06.3

28.5

7.9

3.20.21.42.9

Nethlnds

1.3

61.716.33.0

30.62.19.7

38.05.64.1

20.94.02.4

Portugal

7.6

40.0

10.32.8

12.913.4

52.4

11.44.2

21.215.4

Spain

...

92.10.5

17.032.841.8

7.8

2.15.00.7

UK

1.4

62.424.25.4

24.86.51.5

36.28.13.1

19.53.61.8

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Governments typically make registration at a labour exchange a prerequisitefor obtaining unemployment benefits. In some places, such as France orSpain, individuals who register as unemployed gain eligibility for healthcare and can count working years towards a pension. In other places, suchas Greece, few of the unemployed collect benefits and there is little otherreason to register since few jobs are allocated through the exchanges. Thesedifferences may have political consequences for the salience ofunemployment.

When more people rely on state institutions to provide them with jobsthey are also more likely to blame the government when job opportunitiesare inadequate. Even when high rates of registration are an artefact of smallgovernmental incentives (such as reduced-rate transportation passes for theunemployed), people may nonetheless be cognitively more oriented towardholding the government accountable. Conversely, low registration rates in acountry may reflect tight restrictions on eligibility for benefits or few decentjobs allocated through the labour offices. Despite the fact that lowregistration rates might be the result of a lack of government resources forjob-seekers, the fact that people do not look to the government in thesecircumstances might paradoxically diminish the political cost ofunemployment to the government.

Thus, the political costs of unemployment are smaller when thegovernment has made lesser commitments. Institutional commitmentscreate their own cognitive orientations. This insight is supported by a richliterature on the politics of welfare, pensions and military conscriptionpolicies. The common theme in these works is that governmental policiesestablish their own evaluative logics.44 For instance, pointing to the politicalresiliency of universal social programs as opposed to means-tested ones inSweden, Rothstein argues that some kinds of arrangements have an easiertime appearing fair than others.

The manner in which an existing policy is administered is causallylinked to whether or not it will be politically possible for governmentto attack it. ... depending on the institutions we select for furnishingcitizens with these basic resources, we create different types of morallogic in the social policy discourse.45

We know that the rate of unemployment in an economy is sensitive to theduration and size of unemployment benefits as well as to the particular waysthat benefits are monitored.46 We can hypothesise that such institutionalcommitments by the government also affect the way people politicallyinterpret unemployment.

In testing this hypothesis we have no way of knowing to what extentregistrants at labour exchanges are actually relying on this method to find

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FIGURE 5DIFFERENCE IN DEMOCRATIC SUPPORT VS. PERCENTAGE OF EMPLOYMENT

WHOSE ONLY JOB SEARCH IS REGISTRATION AT LABOUR EXCHANGES

50

45

40

35

30

25

20

15

10

5

0

• Spain '

, ßfeece

• Italy

France•

Denmark

/

> IrelandBritain

4 Belgium

•

Germany

PortugalR2= 0.4708

Netherlands Correlation Coeff = 0.686

1 15 10 15 20

Difference in Democratic Support (employed vs. unemployed)

25

work - especially when registration is combined with other methods of jobsearch. Therefore, we take as our independent variable only the portion ofthe unemployed whose only method of job search is registration (the toprow in Table 4). It is hypothesised that in countries where more unemployedrely solely on governmental offices to find employment, they will blame thegovernment more in their political interpretations and correspondinglyunemployment will be more politically salient.

The results indicate that some relationship appears to exist, as evidencedby the strongly positive correlation coefficient. Almost half of the observedvariation in our proxy for the salience of unemployment can be explainedby the different search habits among job seekers (as shown by the R-squared). The fit would be much closer if not for Italy. Here there is only anintermediate level in the political salience of unemployment but a very highlevel of unemployed who only seek work through registration. However, inTable 4 above we can see (by combining the top two rows) that total levelsof registration are not particularly high in Italy. Similar or greater portions

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of the unemployed also register in Belgium, Denmark, France, Germanyand Spain, but they tend to combine registration with other methods of job-search. Regardless of how we wish to treat Italy, the findings suggest that itmay be theoretically fruitful to consider the political impact ofunemployment in terms of institutions which shape the cognitive maps bywhich people blame the government for joblessness.

CONCLUSION

This paper represents merely a first attempt to understand differences in thepolitical salience of unemployment. The data permit only a tentativeindication of which theoretical relationships might be most promising. Ourmeasure of individual-level opinion gaps is an imperfect indicator for whatmust be accomplished by more country-specific case studies of thechanging political valence of unemployment. It has been suggested thatneither the generosity of unemployment compensation nor the duration ofunemployment spells strongly influence the political salience ofunemployment. Evidence instead indicates that national differences in thepolitical importance of unemployment are better traced to differences innational patterns of employment and the form of state commitments toproviding employment.

There may be complex contradictory causation at work here. Perhapsmore generous programmes for compensating joblessness and shorterunemployment spells actually do tend to diminish the salience ofunemployment, but it is impossible to observe these effects because they aresystematically overwhelmed by counter-effects related to the character ofemployment. Unions, labour parties and others concerned with protectingthe quality of jobs are also particularly fearful of unemployment. Workersworry that they, too, may become unemployed and they fear the downwardwage pressure exerted by desperate job-seekers willing to accept sub-standard jobs. Those countries that generously protect (and thereby prolongthe status of) the unemployed are the very same countries which try to sethigh minimum standards for employment norms. Unemployment benefits(unlike early retirement) help job-seekers to hold out for jobs that makebetter use of their skills and maintain their accustomed income levels.Governments which give greater compensation to the unemployedparadoxically intensify the political salience of unemployment byincreasing the relative significance of not having a job. The political resultsof caring for the unemployed and maintaining high employment standardsmight have opposite effects on the political salience of unemployment. Theoverall effect of either tendency is, therefore, relatively weak and uncertain.It is difficult to disentangle the two effects from one another.47

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Regardless of these complexities or the shortcomings of the data, thereare a couple of provocative theoretical suggestions implicit in thesetentative findings. First of all, changes in the nature of prevailing patterns ofwork may help to explain why double-digit unemployment could becomepolitically normal. In advanced industrial democracies, political taboosagainst unemployment were strongest and commitments for fullemployment strongest when industrial employment was at its peak in thedecades immediately following the Second World War. Surely other factorsare present here - such as the declining efficacy of Keynesian demandpolicies and the declining threat of domestic Communist parties. But it maybe important to consider how political interpretations of unemployment aredefined in terms of prevailing norms of employment. Even more importantthan the actual decline in the portion of manufacturing employment inadvanced economies may be the fact that full-time industrial bread-winnerjobs may no longer be seen as the jobs of the future or the commandingheights of the economy.48 A declining notion of the industrial bread-winneras the prototype of employment could contribute to the decline ofunemployment as a focal point for popular evaluations of economic rule.

Finally, social-democratic policies to compensate the unemployed orestablish employment standards are often blamed for increasing Europeanunemployment rates. These claims may or may not be exaggerated. But theargument above suggests that these social-democratic commitments mightparadoxically increase the political costs of whatever unemployment doesresult. The political decline of social democracy in recent decades of risingunemployment might partially result from policies intended to protectlabour from unemployment which ironically made unemployment morepolitically damaging.49

There are two possible policy conclusions that incumbent governmentsmight take from these findings. European governments seeking to diminishthe political salience of unemployment could cut unemployment benefits,abolish employment standards, cease protecting industrial employment, anddo little to help people to find jobs. Alternately, governments might pursuestrong social and labour policies that simultaneously erode the distinctionbetween employment and non-employment. Such policies might include:job-sharing; treating child-care, care of the elderly, and non-profit work aslegal employment; paid educational sabbaticals; and guaranteed citizenincomes. The growing interest in these latter types programmes over the1990s might be an indication that politicians have intuited some of theconclusions this paper has tried to present analytically.50

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WHEN IS UNEMPLOYMENT POLITICALLY IMPORTANT? 9 3

NOTES

1. The government is assumed to possess the tools and abilities to solve social problems 'andtherefore perceived failure to improve such conditions erodes faith in those who are inpower'. Stephen M. Weatherford, 'Economic "Stagflation" and Public Support for thePolitical System', British Journal of Political Science 14 (April 1984), pp.187-205 at 189.Although ordinary citizens may not fully understand the details of economic policy, theyhold their leaders politically accountable based on their broad perceptions of the materialsituation. Individuals evaluating the effectiveness of their leaders' economic managementcan only process limited amounts of information and can exercise at best 'boundedrationality'. See James G. March, 'Bounded Rationality, Ambiguity, and the Engineering ofChoice', in James March (ed.), Decisions and Organizations, pp.266-93; Herbert Simon,Administrative Behavior (New York: Macmillian 1947). They simplify complex informationabout situations into more tractable 'morsels' to evaluate. See Robert Lane, PoliticalIdeology (New York: The Free Press 1962). Unemployment is regarded as a predominantcognitive shorthand for gauging economic conditions.

2. Robertson argues that among numerous economic factors unemployment is especiallypredictive of cabinet durability in the eight European democracies he studied between 1958 and1982. See John D. Robertson, 'Toward a Political-Economic Accounting of the Endurance ofCabinet Administrations: An Empirical Assessment of Eight European Democracies',American Journal of Political Science 28/4 (1984), pp.693-709. Unemployment is thought tocause breakdowns of law and order and potentially revolt. See Samuel Brittan, 'The EconomicConsequences of Democracy', British Journal of Political Science 5/2 (1975), pp.129-59.Unemployment is typically distributed widely throughout the population at large, unlike othersocial problems like poverty that are thereby easier for other groups to ignore. See MichaelMorris, 'Are Poverty and Unemployment Social Problems? The Dynamics of PublicDefinitions', Sociology and Social Research 69/3 (1985), pp.396-411.

3. Hibbs shows that parties tend to pursue the macroeconomic interests of their coreconstituencies. See Douglas A. Hibbs, 'Political Parties and Macroeconomic Policy',American Political Science Review 71/4 (1977), pp.1467-87. Left-wing parties are found todrive down unemployment at the cost of higher inflation, while right-wing parties do theopposite. On corporatist bargaining, see, for instance, David Cameron, 'Social Democracy,Corporatism, Labour Quiescence and the Representation of Economic Interest in AdvancedCapitalist Society', in John Goldthrope (ed.), Order and Conflict in ContemporaryCapitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1984); Fritz W. Scharpf, Crisis and Choice inEuropean Social Democracy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1991); Phillipe Schmitter,'Interest Intermediation and Regime Governability in Contemporary Western Europe andNorth America', in Suzanne Berger (ed.), Organizing Interests in Western Europe(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1981).

4. On the relationship between economic hardship and eroding political support forliberalisation among individuals see Mary McIntosh et al., 'Publics Meet Market Democracyin Central and East Europe, 1991-1993', Slavic Review 53/2 (1994), pp.483-512; MaryMclntosh and Martha Abele MacIver, 'Coping with Freedom and Uncertainty: PublicOpinion in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia 1989-1992', International Journal ofPublic Opinion Research 4/4 (1992), pp.375-91; and William Mishler and Richard Rose,'Trajectories of Fear and Hope: Support for Democracy in Post-Communist Europe',Comparative Political Studies 28/4 (1996), pp.553-81. For cross-national data analysisshowing that macro-deterioration corresponds with rejection of incumbents see AlexanderPacek, 'Macroeconoic Conditions and Electoral Politics in Eastern Europe', AmericanJournal of Political Science 38/3 (1994), pp.723-44. In post-communist countries wherefull-employment was a long-held expectation anti-government voting has been linked to highlevels of unemployment; see Timothy J. Colton, 'Economics and Voting in Russia', Post-Soviet Affairs 12/4 (1996), pp.289-318; and John Gibson and Anna Cielecka, 'EconomicInfluences on the Political Support for Market Reform in Post-communist Transitions: SomeEvidence from the 1993 Polish Parliamentary Elections', Europe-Asia Studies 47/5 (1995),pp.765-86.

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9 4 WEST EUROPEAN POLITICS

5. Unemployment is considered an especially important political bellweather because of themultiple ways that it affects people's lives. Unemployment entails an interruption of income,loss of status and psychological distress with separation from the chief source of identity andorganisational frame for daily life. See Marie Jahoda, Employment and Unemployment(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1982); Andrew E. Clark and Andrew J. Oswald,'Unhappiness and Unemployment', The Economic Journal 104 (May 1994), pp.648-59; P.Warr, Work, Unemployment and Mental Health (Oxford: Oxford University Press 1987).Unemployment has been shown to be the strongest single economic predictor of individualsocial pathologies such as homicide, imprisonment and mental disorders; see HarveyBrenner, 'Estimating the Social Costs of National Economic Policy' (Study prepared for theuse of the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 1976), in KaySchlozman and Sidney Verba (eds.), Injury to Insult: Unemployment, Class, and PoliticalResponse (Cambridge: Harvard UP 1979), p.54. Piven and Cloward argue that the hardshipof unemployment is so politically dangerous because it dilutes social control over theunemployed at the same time that it gives them cause for grievance. Mass unemployment'diminishes the capacity of other institutions to bind and constrain people' by removingpeople from conformity to occupational behaviors and outlooks; Francis Fox Piven andRichard Cloward, Regulating the Poor: The Function of Public Welfare (NY: Vintage Books1993), p.7. Unemployment is particularly destabilising because regular work routines arecrucial for maintaining social order. Individuals' political horizons are ordinarily constrainedby their private interests within the rewards and punishments of their jobs, 'but massunemployment severs that bond, loosening people from the main institution by which theyare regulated and controlled' (ibid., pp.6-7).

6. Schlozman and Verba (eds.), Injury to Insult, p.79.7. Enrico Pugliese, 'Models of Unemployment in Europe' (10th Conference of the

Europeanists, Chicago, 14-16 March 1996).8. In the welfare state literature, see Paul Pierson, Dismantling the Welfare State? Reagan,

Thatcher and the Politics of Retrenchment (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994);Paul Pierson, 'The New Politics of the Welfare State', World Politics 48/1 (1996),pp.143-79. In the literature on the political economy of economic liberalization see LarryDiamond, 'Economic Development and Democracy Reconsidered', American BehavioralScientist 35/4 (1992), pp.450-99; Geoffrey Evans and Stephen Whitefield, 'The Politics andEconomics of Democratic Commitment: Support for Democracy in Transition Societies',British Journal of Political Science 25/4 (1995), pp.485-14; Stephan Haggard and Robert R.Kaufman, The Political Economy of Democratic Transitions (Princeton: Princeton UP 1995);Joel Hellman, 'Winners Take All: The Politics of Partial Reform in Post-CommunistTransitions', World Politics 50/1 (1998), pp.203-34; Adam Przeworski, 'Economic Reforms,Public Opinion, and Political Institution: Poland in the Eastern European Perspective', inJosé María Maravall, Luiz Carlos Pereira and Adam Przeworski (eds.), Economic Reformsin New Democracies: A Social-Democratic Approach (Cambridge: Cambridge UP 1993).

9. Gilles Saint-Paul, 'Exploring the Political Economy of Labour Market Institutions',Economic Policy 23 (Oct. 1996), pp.263-306.

10. The PSOE was re-elected in 1986, 1989 and 1993 with unemployment at 22, 17 and 23 percent respectively. They won re-election even when their absolute majority control ofparliament left little doubt about which party was accountability for policy performance. SeeJosé María Maravall, Surviving Accountable (Jean Monnet Chair Papers, no. 46, Florence:Robert Schuman Centre at the European University Institute, 1997), pp.32-3.

11. A recent Eurobarometer survey shows that almost a quarter of Europeans recently placedunemployment atop a long list of the issues most important to them, ranking far higher thanspecific national issues, crime, immigration or the environment — none of which are topranked by more than nine per cent of voters. See Eurobarometer 41.1 and 42 cited inChristopher J. Anderson, 'Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures? Unemploymentand Voter Behavior in Comparative Perspective', Unemployment's Effects: The SouthernEuropean Experience in Comparative Perspective (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University1997).

12. The adjusted R-squared value is 0.0178 with a 95 per cent confidence interval. The

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respective unemployment rates and per cent of respondents who chose unemployment as themost important political issue are as follows: Belgium 6.7, 48.3; Denmark 7.7, 34.9; France8.9, 69.0; Germany 4.8, 51.1; Greece 6.4, 37.2; Ireland 13.4, 56.0; Italy 9.1, 48.5;Netherlands 6.2, 32.7; Portugal 4.6, 50.0; United Kingdom 7.0, 44.9. Unemployment datafrom EUROSTAT, Short Term Indicators and is seasonally adjusted.

13. Using simple regression analysis we see only a very weak relationship that is in the oppositedirection as expected. Regressing the percentage of respondents who place unemploymentatop their issue agenda against changes in the unemployment over the last year (or two years,or three). Using seasonally adjusted EUROSTAT unemployment data the adjusted R-squareddoes not exceed 0.11 and greater reductions in unemployment unexpectedly correspond togreater concern with unemployment (expressed in the issue agenda). Perhaps largereductions in unemployment should not be taken as an indication that concern over the issuehas fallen but could, on the contrary, indicate that great concern over the issue has causedanti-unemployment policies.

14. Nor is the issue ranking of unemployment on surveys a dependable measure of the politicalimportance of unemployment. Scholarship on American popular attitudes toward theeconomy shows that when citizens declare that some economic issue has become morepressing they are largely parroting media or government proclamations; but these statementsabout the economy do not necessarily translate into political judgements about thegovernment. See Marc J. Hetherington, 'The Media's Role in Forming Voters' NationalEconomic Evaluations in 1992', American Journal of Political Science 40/2 (1996),pp.372-95; H. Brandon Haller and Helmut Norpoth, 'Reality Bites: News Exposure andEconomic Opinion', Public Opinion Quarterly 61 (1997), pp.555-75; Christopher Wlezien,Mark Franklin and Daniel Twiggs, 'Economic Perceptions and Vote Choice: Disentanglingthe Endogeneity', Political Behavior 19/1 (1997), pp.7-17.

15. By political salience I mean the political threat or political importance posed byunemployment. The perhaps overly general word 'salience' is used here to capture generalfeatures of unemployment's political valence, including voting effects, protest effects, andthe prominence with which people hold unemployment as an evaluative criteria whenmaking political decisions. In future work and with more finely-tuned data it would be usefulto disaggregate these effects.

16. The Eurobarometer 41.1 and 42 from which this data is pooled has a sample size ofapproximately 1,500-2,000 persons from each country.

17. I focus on the difference between the employed and unemployed's overall support of thepolitical system for two reasons. First, unlike questions about voter participation orideological leanings, the question about overall system support is sufficiently general thatresults will not reflect national peculiarities such as voting laws or partisan politics. Second,it is the only question in Andersen's data set for which the difference between employed andunemployed is large and in the same direction for all countries. Anderson also finds that theunemployed generally vote less, are more left-leaning, and are less interested in politics; butthese differences do not hold in all countries.

18. Anderson, 'Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures?'.19. Personal communication with Miguel Glatzer. The Portuguese unemployed are moreover far

more politically interested than the typical Portuguese employed person, a relationship thatis the opposite in almost every other country. Belgium, by contrast, is the only country wherethe unemployed are more right-leaning than the employed. See Christopher Anderson andChristine Guillory. 'Political Institutions and Satisfaction with Democracy: A Cross-NationalAnalysis of Consensus and Majoritarian Systems', American Political Science Review 91/1(1997), pp.66-81.

20. Anderson, 'Desperate Times Call for Desperate Measures?'.21. Gøsta Esping-Andersen, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press 1990); Piven and Cloward, Regulating the Poor, George Steinmetz,'Regulating the Social: The Welfare State and Local Politics in Imperial Germany', inNicholas B. Dirks, Sherry B. Ortner and Geoff Eley (eds.), Princeton Studies inCulture/Power/History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1993).

22. Przeworski, 'Economic Reforms, Public Opinion, and Political Institution', p. 165.

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23. George Akerlof and Janet L. Yellen, 'The Fair-Wage Effort Hypothesis and Unemployment',Quarterly Journal of Economics 105 (1990), pp.255-83.

24. Martin Feldstein, 'The Economics of New Unemployment', The Public Interest 33 (Fall1973), pp.3-42.

25. Alexis De Tocqueville concluded from the French Revolution that it was not squalor andhardship that caused people to rebel but the frustration of rising expectations. Alexis DeTocqueville, The Old Regime and the French Revolution (New York: Anchor Books 1983[1856]).

26. Ted Gurr, 'Why Men Rebel', Monthly Review Press (1971).27. Peter Eisinger, 'The Conditions of Protest Behavior in American Cities', American Political

Science Review 67 (1973), pp.11-28; Doug McAdam, The Political Process and theDevelopment of Black Insurgency (Chicago: Chicago University Press 1982); David Snyderand Charles Tilly, 'Hardship and Collective Violence in France: 1830-1960', AmericanSociological Review 37 (1972), pp.520-32; Sidney Tarrow, Power in Movement: SocialMovements, Collective Action, and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1994);Charles Tilly, From Mobilization to Revolution (Wesley: Adison 1978).

28. Agreement on this point undergirds unemployment theory for both conservative economistsand Marxists. Current macroeconomic theory is based principally around the idea that whenunemployment falls below certain levels — that may change over time — inflation isaccelerated. This idea, known as a variable Non-Accelerating Inflation Rate ofUnemployment (NAIRU) rests on the notion that the level of unemployment influenceswhether firms will be forced to compensate workers for rising costs with higher wages, thusspiraling inflation further upward. Marxist theories similarly see the 'reserve army of theunemployed' as serving capitalist interests against higher wages. On the confluence of thesetheories see Robert Pollin, 'Can Marx, Kalecki, Friedman, and Wall Street All Be Wrong?'Review of Radical Political Economics (Fall 1998).

29. Donald R. Kinder and Roderick D. Kiewiet. 'Sociotropic Politics', British Journal ofPolitical Science 11 (April 1981), pp.29-41; Donald R. Kinder and Walter R. Mebane Jr.,'Politics and Economics in Everyday Life', in Kisten Monroe (ed.), The Political Processand Economic Change (New York: Agathon Press 1983), pp.141-80.

30. This does not mean that citizens are altruistic or other-regarding; it may simply mean thatthey see their long-term interests served if the nation prospers.

31. Morris P. Fiorina, 'Short Term and Long-Term Effects of Economic Conditions on IndividualVoting Decisions', in D.A. Hibbs and H. Fassbender (eds.), Contemporary PoliticalEconomy (Amsterdam: North-Holland 1981); Richard R. Lau and David O. Sears,'Cognitive Links Between Economic Grievances and Political Responses', PoliticalBehavior 4 (1981), pp.92-111.

32. Kinder and Mebane, 'Politics and Economics in Everyday Life'.33. 'Only very few citizens are motivated to vote against the incumbent simply because they see

their financial situation has deteriorated. In election surveys from these six nations,retrospective personal economic circumstance (no matter how it is measured) virtually alwaysfails to register statistically significant main effects on legislative vote': Michael Lewis-Beck,Economics & Elections: The Major European Democracies (Ann Arbor: University ofMichigan Press 1988), p.155. The exceptions are US presidential elections, where there is amild but significant effect; see Roderick Kiewit, Macroeconomics and Micropolitics(Chicago: Chicago University Press 1983), p.49; Gregory Markus, 'The Impact of Personaland National Economic Conditions on the Presidential Vote: A Pooled Cross-SectionalAnalysis', American Journal of Political Science 32 (1988), pp.137-54. In post-communistcountries individuals who suffer greater economic hardship are less likely to express supportfor the political system but sociotropic interpretations still dominate: McIntosh et al., 'PublicsMeet Market Democracy in Central and East Europe'; McIntosh and MacIver, 'Coping withFreedom and Uncertainty'; Mishler and Rose, 'Trajectories of Fear and Hope'.

34. Schlozman and Verba (eds.), Injury to Insult, p.194.35. Lewis-Beck, Economics & Elections, p.36.36. The findings also hold, though somewhat less strongly, if we take 50 or 80 per cent of the

median as our proxy.

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37. A disproportionate amount of East Germans were unemployed. Their disillusionment withdemocracy might be more a function of disappointment with reunification than theiremployment situation per se.

38. In the OECD in 1990 the unemployed constituted only one-eighth of the larger set of non-employed, see OECD, The OECD Jobs Study: Evidence and Explanations (Paris: OECD1995), p.186. Even among 25-54 year old men, unemployment accounts for only as much ashalf of non-employment (ibid., p.191).

39. John A. Garraty, Unemployment in History: Economic Thought and Public Policy (NY:Harper and Row 1979); George Grantham, 'Economic History and the History of LabourMarkets', in George Grantham and Mary MacKinnon (eds.), Labour Market Evolution: TheEconomic History of Market Integration, Wage Flxibility and the Employment Relation (NY:Routledge 1994); Alexander Keyssar, 'History and the Problem of Unemployment', SocialistReview 19/4 (1989), pp.15-34; idem, Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment inMassachusetts (London: Cambridge University Press 1986); Krishan Kumar, 'From Work toEmployment and Unemployment: The English Experience', in R. Pahl (ed.), On Work(Oxford: Basil Blackwood 1988); Robert Salais, 'Why was Unemployment so Low in FranceDuring the 1930s?' in B. Eichengreen and T.J. Hatton (eds.), Interwar Unemployment inInternational Perspective (Boston: Kluwer 1988), pp.247-88; E.P. Thompson, 'Time, WorkDiscipline and Industrial Capitalism', Past and Present 38 (1967), pp.56-97; WilliamWalters, 'Discovering "Unemployment": New Forms for the Government of Poverty',Economy and Society 23/3 (1994), pp.265-90; Noel Whiteside, and James A. Gillespie,'Deconstructing Unemployment: Developments in Britain in the Interwar Years', EconomicHistory Review 44/4 (1991), pp.665-82.

40. Micheal J. Piore, 'Historical Perspectives and the Interpretation of Unemployment', Journalof Economic Literature 25/4 (1987), pp.1834-50 at 1836. Garraty also notes:'Unemployment connotes a certain kind of relationship to one's work. Slaves can notproperly be called unemployed, nor can truly independent artisans, writers, shopkeepers orfarmers. It is too hard to imagine that these groups want to work but can not connect with themeans to do so. In order to be unemployed labor must be free, yet dependent. It is typifiedby the worker who absolutely must be under hire to have any means of livelihood. One mustbe free to quit work and also liable to be dismissed, but in doing so lost the means forlivelihood': Garraty, Unemployment in History, p.5.

41. Andrew Glyn, 'The Assessment: Unemployment and Inequality', Oxford Review ofEconomic Policy 11/1 (1995, p.3.

42. Perhaps the first argument against the applicability of the standard labour force frameworkof unemployment to service sector work is Wilbert E. Moore, 'The Exportability of the"Labor Force" Concept', American Sociological Review 68 (1958). Many have argued thatin the new post-industrial, post-Fordist age unemployment is a less relevant distinctionbecause income is ever more decoupled from employment: Stanley Aronowitz and WilliamDifazio, The Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press 1994); Andre Gorz, Paths to Paradise: On the Liberation from Work(London: Pluto Press 1985); Bob Jessop, 'Towards a Schumpterian Workfare State?Preliminary Remarks on Post-Fordist Political Economy', Studies in Political Economy 40(Spring 1993), pp.7-39; John Keane, Democracy and Civil Society: On the Predicaments ofEuropean Socialism, the Prospects for Democracy, and the Problem of Controlling Socialand Political Power (London: Verso 1988); Claus Offe, 'Capitalism by Democratic Design?Democratic Theory Facing the Triple Transition in East-Central Europe' (1992); JeremyRifkin and Robert Heilbronner, The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force andthe Dawn of the Post-Market Era (New York: Putnam 1996); Walters, 'Discovering"Unemployment"'.

43. As the ILO states, 'For self-employed persons seeking work activities, such as contactingpotential clients, distributing leaflets or business cards, preparing estimates, quotes ortenders, and activities related to the establishing of a new business, firm or professionalpractice ... are to be considered work...'; see ILO, Surveys of Economically ActivePopulation, Employment, Unemployment and Underemployment (Geneva: ILO 1990), p.99.

44. ILO, Surveys; Margaret Levi, Consent, Dissent, and Patriotism (Cambridge: Cambridge

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University Press 1998); Bo Rothstein, 'Administration and Legitimacy: A ComparativePerspective' (Annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, Boston 1996);idem, 'Just Institutions Matter', in Robert E. Goodin (ed.), Theories of Institutional Design(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998).

45. Rothstein, 'Administration and Legitimacy', p.18.46. George Tsebelis and Stephen Roland, 'Monitoring Unemployment Benefits in Comparative

Persective', Political Research Quarterly 47/4 (1994), pp.793-820; John Humphrey, 'Arethe Unemployed Part of the Urban Poverty Problem in Latin America?' Journal of LatinAmerican Studies 26/3 (1994), p.713; Susan Fleck and Constance Sorrentino, 'Employmentand Unemployment in Mexico's Labor Force', Monthly Labor Review (Nov. 1994), pp.3-22.

47. There are two reasons for this difficulty: firstly because the limited number of data pointsmakes it impractical to conduct multi-variant regression analysis; secondly because somecountries which give less policy effort to income maintenance for the unemployed mightgive greater effort to moving the unemployed out of unemployment (through active labourmarket measures or programmes such as early retirement).

48. The new kind of employment arrangement was well articulated during recent downsizings atAT&T, where employment once typified American long-term industrial bread-winnercareers, 'People need to look at themselves as self-employed, as vendors who come to thiscompany to sell their skills.... In AT&T, we have to promote the whole concept of the workforce being contingent, though most of our contingent workers are inside our walls... "Jobs"are being replaced by "projects" and "fields of work", [a labor force that is] jobless but notworkless' (vice-president for human resources, James Meadows, The New York Times, 13Feb. 1996).

49. Alternately, as some data suggests, parties might have 'ownership' of particular issues:Christopher J. Anderson, Blaming the Government: Citizens and the Economy in FiveEuropean Democracies (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe 1995). Voters may for instance trustconservatives to fight inflation and social-democrats to fight unemployment regardless ofwhich party is in office when the problem intensifies. Thus, increased concern forunemployment, brought about by the cognitive orientations from social democraticemployment policies, might encourage voting for social-democrats.

50. On the growth of these kinds of alternative anti-unemployment measures across Europe seeHugh Compston, The New Politics of Unemployment: Radical Policy Initiatives in WesternEurope (NY: Routledge 1997).

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