Decommodification and Activation in Social Democratic Policy: Resolving the Paradox Jingjing Huo, Drew University (Department of Political Science, Smith House, Drew University, Madison, NJ 07940, 973-408-3529) Moira Nelson, University of North Carolina (Lenbachstrasse 7a, Berlin 10245,
[email protected], 0049-(0)178-210-1921), and John D. Stephens, University of North Carolina (Center for European Studies, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3449,
[email protected], 919-962-4634) Forthcoming in Journal of European Social Policy 18, 2008 2 Decommodification and Activation in Social Democratic Policy: Resolving the Paradox In Esping-Andersen’s influential work on three worlds of welfare capitalism, decommodification appears as the central characteristic of the welfare state, and efforts to de-commodify labor are posited to be the main goal of social democracy. Since decommodification is defined as exit from the labor market with little or no loss of income, social democrats’ emphasis on decommodification clashes with another purported goal of social democracy, high labor force participation. Drawing on research demonstrating the divergent employment effects of various decommodifying social policies, we resolve the existing paradox by showing that social democratic parties are supportive of decommodifying social policies insofar as these policies do not reduce aggregate levels of employment. Pooled time series analysis of employment-impeding policies (long-term unemployment replacement rate, social security and payroll taxes, and employment protection) suggests that they are associated with Christian democracy rather than social democracy. Instead, we find that social democracy is a key determinant of employment-friendly policies, such as active labor market spending and short-term unemployment replacement rate.