Governing Work and Welfare in a New Economy

This book examines the common challenges confronting the European Union and the United States as they reconfigure work and welfare in a new economy and struggle to develop effective and legitimate governance arrangements. Chapters by leading European and American scholars demonstrate that despite institutional and political differences, the EU and the US face similar problems created by changes in productive organization, employment patterns, household structures, and social risks. They likewise face similar problems of coordinating reforms across interdependent policy domains and levels of governance, each involving a multiplicity of public and private actors. Because the issues are complex, the environment uncertain, and ready-made solutions unsatisfactory, policy makers in Europe and the US have increasingly recognized the need to accept diversity, encourage experimentation, foster collaborative problem-solving, and link multiple levels of governance. The result has been a proliferation of new forms of experimentalist governance based on various combinations of devolved decision making, information pooling and performance comparison, deliberative exploration of promising solutions or 'good practices', and redefinition of policy objectives in light of accumulated experience. Europeans are systematically studying and debating each others' policies and practices through the Open Method of Coordination, while American states and localities are likewise developing new mechanisms for information sharing and horizontal comparison. Hence there is now an opportunity to expand the process of mutual learning to the transatlantic region as a whole. Governing Work and a Welfare in a New Economy contributes to this project by tracing parallel trends in governance and showing how new policy solutions are emerging from such experimentation. The book's innovative interdisciplinary approach and up-to-date coverage of current transformations in work, welfare, and governance on both sides of the Atlantic will make it required reading for scholars, students, and policy makers alike.