Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Shifting the Employment Burden: The Social and Economic Foundations of Employment Policy Reform

政治学博士论文研究：转移就业负担：就业政策改革的社会经济基础

• 批准号: 1065823
• 负责人: Sarah Brooks
• 金额: $ 0.75万
• 依托单位: Ohio State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-05-15 至 2012-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1065823&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

This project examines the transformation of employment policies in developed democracies. As a result of recent policy reforms, developed democracies now vary markedly in a crucial yet often overlooked feature: who bears responsibility for seeking employment. Some governments have devoted substantial resources to directly assisting workers with job placement through policies that maintain or expand the state's responsibility and society's responsibility for employment outcomes. In contrast, other governments have reduced policy costs by scaling back such employment assistance and at the same time increasing the number of requirements that the unemployed must meet in the job search process. The latter reforms not only transfer to individuals a greater share of the cost and responsibility for finding employment, but fundamentally change the broader nature of social policies. This project seeks to explain shifts in responsibility for finding employment by identifying divisions in workers'' policy preferences based on the different employment risks facing workers, particularly within the unionized workforce. The researcher collects original survey data in order to track the types of employment risk experienced by workers, and demonstrates the role that this risk plays in shaping workers' social policy preferences. The analysis focuses on the labor force in Germany, where important reforms affecting the distribution of employment responsibility have been enacted. Two types of employment risks are examined: those relating to job security and those tied to the prospect of re-employability. The researcher will evaluate the effect of employment risk on workers' preferences about the degree to which the government or the unemployed should bear responsibility for finding employment. Building on prior research, the project will also assess the impact of divisions within the labor movement on public support for policy reform. This project makes several broader contributions. By identifying new divisions in policy preferences based on employment risk, this research will advance understanding of how distributional conflicts affect policy outcomes. Specifically, it will show how variation in two kinds of employment risk, job security and re-employability, shape the social policy preferences of unionized workers, making way for governments to adopt difficult and loss-imposing reforms in social policies. In additional, the original dataset generated by the project will allow other scholars to study employment policy preferences and to examine the political influence of labor unions in post-industrial economies. By focusing on changes in the purpose of social policies and how program benefits are allocated across society, this research enhances understanding of trends in social insurance reform and of determinants of the degree of social protection that governments provide citizens in advanced industrial democracies.

该项目研究发达民主国家就业政策的转变。由于最近的政策改革，发达民主国家现在在一个关键但经常被忽视的特征上存在显着差异：谁承担寻找就业的责任。一些政府投入了大量资源，通过维持或扩大国家责任和社会对就业结果的责任的政策，直接帮助工人就业。相比之下，其他政府通过缩减此类就业援助并同时增加失业者在求职过程中必须满足的要求来降低政策成本。后者的改革不仅将更大份额的就业成本和责任转移给个人，而且从根本上改变了社会政策的更广泛性质。该项目旨在根据工人（尤其是工会劳动力）面临的不同就业风险确定工人政策偏好的分歧，从而解释寻找就业责任的转变。研究人员收集原始调查数据，以跟踪工人所经历的就业风险类型，并论证这种风险在塑造工人社会政策偏好方面所发挥的作用。分析的重点是德国的劳动力，德国已经实施了影响就业责任分配的重要改革。研究了两种类型的就业风险：与工作保障相关的风险和与再就业前景相关的风险。研究人员将评估就业风险对工人对于政府或失业者应在多大程度上承担就业责任的偏好的影响。在先前研究的基础上，该项目还将评估劳工运动内部的分歧对公众支持政策改革的影响。该项目做出了多项更广泛的贡献。通过根据就业风险确定政策偏好的新划分，这项研究将加深对分配冲突如何影响政策结果的理解。具体来说，它将展示工作保障和再就业能力这两种就业风险的变化如何影响工会工人的社会政策偏好，为政府在社会政策中采取困难且造成损失的改革铺平道路。此外，该项目生成的原始数据集将使其他学者能够研究就业政策偏好并研究工会在后工业经济中的政治影响。通过关注社会政策目的的变化以及计划福利如何在社会中分配，本研究加深了对社会保险改革趋势以及先进工业民主国家政府为公民提供社会保护程度的决定因素的理解。