The impact of the European Youth Guarantee on active labour market policies: A convergence analysis

The European Union’s (EU) Youth Guarantee aims to improve the labour market situation of young people. Rather than prescribing a uniform policy model, it acknowledges that supportive measures need to align with national, regional and local circumstances. It thus seeks to promote mutual policy learning through the open method of coordination. As an innovative measure, the EU has deployed funding programmes to support the domestic measures related to the Youth Guarantee. We therefore examined in this study whether this mix of recommendations and financial incentives has entailed a convergence of member state policies. Our analysis of policy outputs for the period 2007?2014 yields a mixed empirical picture. There is catching‐up convergence regarding policies’ sectoral coverage but increasing divergence concerning the number of adopted policy instruments. The first two years of financial incentives did not produce any effect on enhancing policy experimentation among less active member states. We offer an optimistic and a pessimistic interpretation of these findings.     

Personally affected,politically disaffected? How experiences with public employment services impact young people's political efficacy

Unemployment experiences can have consequences for how people think about democracy and where they stand vis‐à‐vis the state. We investigate how young people's experiences with public employment services can shape levels of external political efficacy—the feeling that decision‐makers are responsive to citizen needs. The personal and direct experiences one gathers at this pivotal time in life can also leave their mark on political attitudes. We analyze an original dataset on German youth to test how encounters with such agencies affect young people's political efficacy, finding that perceptions of helpfulness and being treated fairly and with respect increase the likelihood of being politically efficacious. The findings highlight the importance of personal experiences and bureaucratic interactions for vulnerable young people's democratic attitudes.     

Policy integration: mapping the different concepts

A growing number of studies have examined the collaboration of actors from two or more policy domains in order to integrate aims and concerns derived from one policy domain into another. In our literature review, we refer to this empirical phenomenon as ‘policy integration’, exemplified by the Health in All Policies approach. Despite the wealth of literature on the subject, the scientific community only has access to a portion of the insights that have come out of this field of research, due primarily to the fact that policy integration is discussed using a variety of different terms, which tend to be specific to the policy domain under investigation. To facilitate a more inclusive scientific debate on policy integration, we provide a comprehensive overview of the different terminologies associated with policy integration and analyse the recurring themes in the respective literature strands. What is the motivation for policy-makers to promote policy integration? What is the design of the instruments used for policy integration? How does policy integration affect the policy-making process? And how well does policy integration perform? These are the four questions guiding our study.     

Political Economy of Immigration in Germany: Attitudes and Citizenship Aspirations1

This paper examines resident foreigners’ interest in German citizenship. We use a unique data set from a survey of foreign residents in the German states to study the roles played by factors such as attitudes towards foreigners and political interest of foreigners. We find that negative attitudes towards foreigners and generational conflict within foreigner families are significant negative factors. While interest in political participation is among the important positive factors, hostile attitudes, lack of voting rights, or uncertainty about staying in Germany mainly discourage foreigners who actively participate in the labor market, have more years of schooling, and are younger.