Activation and new governance of labor market policies in Central and Eastern European Countries
Activation and new governance of labor market policies in Central and Eastern European Countries

Summary/Abstract: An essential feature of activation turn in labor market policy in Western European countries is reform of the labor administration, which affects the provision and delivery of the policy. The principles underlying governance reforms include decentralization and strengthened coordination, which help to reconcile local flexibility with the national ownership of the active labor market policy. However, few articles examine how these reforms are implemented in Central and Eastern European countries. The activation turn and territorial reforms there took place later than in Western European countries and possibly followed a different trajectory. Based on various materials, including legal acts, public employment services reports, expert releases, and others, the article traces the activation policies’ reforms and their impacts on the organizational arrangements in Latvia, Hungary, and Poland. The findings show that some organizational arrangements of the national PES in countries covered in this study predate the accession to the EU. The critical governance characteristics seem to be affected by the general administration reforms. Public employment services in the three countries have different levels of vertical specialization, which determines the scope of reforms carried out in subsequent years. Further research should take into account the challenges of vertical coordination of the active labor market.

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