oa Flexicurity in tijden van crisis in Nederland en Europa: een vergelijkende analyse van sociale modellen

Flexicurity in times of crisis in the Netherlands and Europe: A comparative analysis of social models

The purpose of the article is to highlight the consequences of the recent economic crises for the way European welfare states and notably the Dutch one dealt with the challenge to maintain the balance between flexibility and security goals with regard to the labour market. This will be pursued against the background of the theory of social models in which social models are conceived as ideal-typical configurations of labour market and social security institutions which reflect different ideas about the functioning of the labour market. We distinguish three models among which the flexicurity model, that is assumed to bridge the two opposite poles of the broad spectrum of social models, i.e. the liberal Anglophone variant and the Classical welfare state variant. The European Labour Force Survey of 2008 is used to analyse the effects of various labour market institutions on the employment performance of countries and regions before the crisis whereas the European Social Survey is used to research the differential impact of the crisis along the broad spectrum of European welfare states on the employment insecurity of various groups such as the youngsters, elderly and the low-skilled.