1. We all know exactly what to do, we
just don’t know how to get re-
elected (J.-C. Juncker) Really??
OECD, Paris
29 November 2019
1
Anton Hemerijck (EUI)

2. 1. A puzzle to explain
2. Taking “social investment” seriously
3. Welfare lessons from the Great Recession
4. Reform is difficult, but it happens! – the Dutch example –
not about re-election but surviving hard times by turn-
taking
5. Light-at-the-end-tunnel (cognitive-normative) reform
discourse
2
Outline

3. 1. Glass half full?
Employment trends in 11 selected OECD countries (% of working-age population; Source: OECD)
3
Denmark
France
Germany
Italy
Netherlands
Poland
Latvia
Spain
Sweden
UK
US
50
55
60
65
70
75
80
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017

4. Children at risk of poverty or social exclusion
4
0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
EU27BE BG CZ DK DE EE IE EL ES FR IT CY LV LT LU HU MT NL AT PL PT RO SI SK FI SE UK
2005 2015
Source: Eurostat
Glass half empty?

5. 5
Beyond the OECD Jobs Study
(1994) tradeoff
employment (y)
equality (x)
and size of welfare states
(Hemerijck & Ronchi 2019)

6. 6
2. Taking social investment
seriously
ECEC stimulates children
cognitive and social
development and
parental employment
High educational
attainment reinforces
success in further
education
Better school and skills
associated with higher
employment and
productivity
ALMP and WLB policies
for higher (female)
employment, lower
gender gaps and higher
fertility
Active ageing, lifelong
learning and LTC induce
higher exit age
Extra-resources for
poverty protection and
prevention
(Hemerijck 2017)

7. Number supported by welfare provision Average consumption per welfare client
Number of workers (hours worked) Average productivity per worker
7
Welfare carrying capacity versus
them-us neoliberal discourse
Long-term strength of the economy and welfare provision
increasingly contingent on social policy contribution to the
(dynamic) productive ‘denominator’ side of the welfare
equation, requiring a wider and more multidimensional
ambit of policy interventions across the entire life course,
beginning with children
(Esping-Andersen et al., 2002)

8. Three complementary functions:
• Raising the quality of lifelong human capital stocks and capabilities
from the young to the old
• Easing and improving gender-balanced flows of contemporary
labour market transitions in line with life course dynamics to retain
human capital
• Upkeeping and upgrading inclusive minimum-income universal
safety nets and social insurance as social (income) protection and
macro-economic stabilization buffers over risky transitions to
protect human capital
8
How: social investment
stocks, flows and buffers
(Hemerijck 2015, 2017)

9. Different policies performing synergic stock-flow-buffer
functions to support citizens’ life-course transitions
– Here and now: stock-flow-buffer policies work in conjunction
to enhance current opportunities (ECEC and WLB); inclusive
buffers with ALMP mitigate moral hazard)
– Cumulative returns over time: policy synergies addressing one
phase of the life course enhance capabilities in later stages
(ECEC early investments in children -> future human capital
gains in employment at lower inequality
9
Social investment policy-mix
matters

10. • Automatic stabilizers work (if buffers inclusive)
• Macroeconomic discretion matters
• Social investment pays (stocks and flows)
• Euro-membership not a blessing per se (pre- and post-crisis
divergencies)
• Social Europe: not yet a glass half-full?
• Unthankful politics of deep crisis management (not about re-
election)
• Consensus democracies (PR) better able to flexibly maintain a
politics of long-term [social investment reform] with electoral
support (and stem the populist tide)
• Are we turning the page on neoliberalism? I think so, slowly
10
3. Welfare Lessons from the
Great Recession

11. • Highly financialized economy (major bank bailouts)
• Requiring overnight EMU austerity
• Housing, health, labour market, social security, pension and
climate structural reform (2012 – 2019)
• Structural reform enacted and delivered by (de facto) minority
coalition [Rutte II VVD/PvdA 2012-2017]
• Reform process: series of ‘social pacts’ progressively endorsed
by ‘constructive opposition’ parties to seal cumulatively
transformative policy change
• Civic education spillover: deep crisis management is about
making «tough but fair» compromises
• «So what» losing election: it’s about turntaking across center
11
4. Longest Dutch government
since 1945 in trying times

12. • Democracy unsafe if economy not able to provide jobs and
goods to sustain acceptable standards of living
• Little reason to panic: long-term success of high-spending EU
welfare states as «productive constraint» for SI reform in
knowledge economies and ageing societies
• Recalibrating solidarity aligning: Piggy Bank insurance, Robin
Hood redistribution, Gender-balanced [stepping-stone and
second-chance] capacitation
• E(M)U’s imperative to construct a «holding environment» for
active and inclusive welfare states to prosper (for which ECB
built a foundation)
• Diverse societies and heterogeneous life course dynamics and
risks better catered for in «consensus democracies»
12
5. Capacitating European
solidarity – no marketing ploy

13. 13
Thank You!
anton.hemerijck@eui.eu