Between 2000 and 2019, Portugal and Spain adopted divergent youth-oriented active labor market policies (ALMPs) to address rising youth unemployment. Drawing on data from the LABREF database, National Reform Programmes, and key economic indicators, we show that Portugal targeted higher education graduates with internship and innovation schemes aligned with its transition to a knowledge-based economy. In contrast, Spain developed a dual vocational education and training system centered on apprenticeships to support its manufacturing sector. These contrasting approaches reflect distinct national growth strategies and demonstrate how governments shape ALMPs in line with broader economic objectives. The findings offer a comparative perspective on policy divergence in Southern Europe and highlight the role of growth strategies in explaining variation in activation policies, even among countries with similar institutional and macroeconomic conditions.

This article examines ultra-activity in collective bargaining - the rule that keeps expired agreements in force - and how its curtailment can shift bargaining power in fragmented wage-setting systems. Drawing on elite interviews, parliamentary debates and legal texts, we compare Portugal and Spain. Spain's 2012 reform limited ultra-activity (introducing a one-year time limit), seeking to decentralise bargaining and weaken unions; the rule was restored in 2021. Portugal abolished indefinite ultra-activity in 2003 and tightened expiry procedures in 2012, allowing employer federations to let agreements lapse, ally with moderate unions and entrench lower wage norms. By conceptualising ultra-activity as a procedural 'switching point', we show how similar reforms generate divergent liberalisation trajectories - reversible in Spain yet durable in Portugal - because bargaining coordination and representativeness rules shape who bargains and how breakdowns are managed. These findings refine accounts of institutional change by suggesting that domestically embedded, incremental legal shifts may prove harder to reverse than crisis-led reforms adopted under heightened external constraint. They also clarify why employers may support sectoral bargaining when it offers flexibility and predictable negotiating counterparts.

Over the past decades, the level of regulation of fixed-term contracts has been in flux. Many reforms deregulating these contracts were followed by a regulatory countertrend, a puzzling finding considering influential theoretical expectations like the ones developed by the dualization and liberalization literatures. This paper draws on the comparative employment relations and comparative political economy literatures to identify the drivers of pro-outsider reforms. Furthermore, it develops an innovative argument claiming that governments may rely on support from a ‘domestic coalition’ including workers in permanent contracts, or they can leverage the European link to support their intention of conducting a pro-outsider reform. Each of these paths relies on the assemblage of distinct pro-reform coalitions of policy actors. To test our argument, the paper uses fsQCA. We compare 38 reforms enacted in 16 European countries between 1985–2019. After the fsQCA analysis, we conduct a qualitative discussion of the different paths.

This study examines how the rise in the share of higher education graduates leads to over-qualification, by focusing on the demand-side drivers. We propose that the benefits of investments in higher education depend on the levels of innovation and economic growth in each national economy. We use a configurational method (Fuzzy Set Qualitative Comparative Analysis) to identify combinations of factors that lead to a high incidence of over-qualification in 17 European countries. The results show that over-qualification is greater in countries in which an increase in the number of graduates is accompanied by a failure to transition to a knowledge-based economy and poor economic growth. Furthermore, a low weight of high-tech manufacturing sectors in the GDP is a necessary condition for over-qualification to occur. These arguments explain the more pronounced mismatch in Southern Europe and Austria compared to other European countries. As for policy implications, this study shows that investment in education did not lead to expected benefits in some countries because this investment did not boost competitiveness in high-tech sectors. Thus, alternative policies must be implemented. Besides investment in education, some kind of industrial policy seems necessary in a number of European countries.

The insider-outsider politics approach conjectures that moderate unions and centre-left parties safeguard the interests of insiders and neglect outsiders in labour market reforms. This article challenges this hypothesis. By comparing the positions taken by centre-left parties and moderate union confederations during labour market reforms in Portugal and Spain (1975–2019), it shows that while they may indeed protect insiders, they sometimes do the opposite. To explain this, the article argues that more attention must be paid to the configuration of left parties and confederations. In Portugal, where communist and radical left parties were strong, the centre-left was afraid of losing outsiders’ electoral support, and thus it did not follow a pro-insider strategy. This was reinforced by the fact that the centre-left had to face the opposition of a strong class-oriented confederation that was not willing to commit to two-tier reforms. This was not what happened in Spain. The centre-left, supported by a union confederation, undertook a two-tier reform in 1984 because there was a different configuration of left parties and confederations. Notwithstanding, this was not a stable equilibrium because this confederation changed its position over time when it realized the negative consequences of these reforms. Henceforth, their strategy became more pro-outsider.

Authors Paulo Marques and Pedro Videira use a comparative political economy framework and employ the varieties of capitalism typology to organize their work in this chapter. Arguing the absence of perfect free-market capitalism or perfect coordination of employment efforts by labor market actors, the authors hypothesize that (a) statism played a key role in tacking youth unemployment through programs that did not rely completely on either liberalized or coordinated markets; (b) the Portuguese government may have implicitly relied on an American entrepreneurship model to transition to a knowledge-based economy to stimulate economic growth; and (c) the state has had to rely on a mix of active labor market policies for youth advocated by the EU both on the supply and the demand sides of the market, but not in a consistent fashion (experimentalism). The authors use historic data on youth-oriented ALMPs implemented in Portugal between 2000 and 2017 to test their hypotheses, and present their results on the congruence of their hypotheses with empirical data. They conclude with a discussion of their expectations on the kinds of policies the government is likely to pursue in the next few years to address continuing concerns of absorbing young graduates into the productive workforce.

After the economic downturn of 2008, youth unemployment rose rapidly in the EU. Simultaneously, many countries were also facing increasing public deficits. In this context, the EU developed a set of policies to tackle youth unemployment and public debt. While policies to fight unemployment were underpinned by the concept of social investment, austerity was seen as the best way to reduce public debt. These different approaches to the crisis led to a growing tension between the two policy areas. This problem was particularly visible in the countries most affected by the sovereign debt crisis where youth unemployment remained very high for a long period of time. Not only were countries with high public debt and low growth unable to invest sufficiently in active labour market policies (ALMPs), but also, at the same time, austerity policies depressed the economic activity. This study uses the fsQCA methodology. Our results point to the existence of one necessary condition for high youth unemployment—low expenditure on ALMPs. The analysis of sufficient conditions points to the existence of one configuration: the countries most affected by the sovereign debt crisis and characterized by having a demand-led growth model, combined a low GDP growth with a low expenditure on ALMPs. Together, this led to high levels of youth unemployment.

The issue of employability has recently gained greater importance for policy makers. Graduates’ unemployment has soared in some EU countries and this led to the realization that public policies were needed to foster their employability. Also, the share of graduates working in low-skilled sectors has been rising, leading to growing over-education and poor employment conditions. Therefore, the number of active labour market policies (ALMP) targeting graduates increased recently in the EU, especially after the 2008 global economic crisis. However, there are great differences between countries and even those with similar levels of graduates’ unemployment and over-education behaved differently. A striking example are Portugal and Spain in which Portugal gave a much greater focus to graduates’ employability in policy design. Our research question is thus: why did Spain and Portugal differ so much in the priority they gave to ALMP targeting graduates?To address this question the paper analyses all ALMP targeting young people in both countries between 2000-2017. The data were drawn from the LABREF database which collects all ALMP in each EU member-state. The results show that during this period Portugal has been much more active in ALMP design with 46 new policies implemented while Spain has only 20. More importantly, Portugal implemented nine policies targeting graduates, while Spain has not implemented any specific policy for this group. Also, Portugal has a much higher number of policies executed both before the crisis and after it. Expenditure in ALMP has also been higher in Portugal in most years. Overall, the measures in both countries relate to wage subsidies, labour market training and internships and workplace-based training. This suggests that Governments are concerned with employability skills of youngsters and try to increase them with general and specific skills but acknowledge that this is an incomplete intervention. Wage subsidies appear as an additional measure to encourage employers to hire youngsters, including graduates.We argue that countries followed different strategies because the social investment paradigm was much more attractive in Portugal than in Spain. In the early 2000s the Portuguese labour market was still very much regulated and reforms were made to increase flexibility (2003 and 2009). Yet the socialist party never strongly adhered to the labour market liberalization agenda (unlike their Spanish counterparts). The social investment agenda seemed a good way to compensate young workers for increasing flexibility and match social cohesion with greater competitiveness. This was at the heart of the Lisbon Strategy (2000) where graduates are a top priority in the transition to the knowledge economy, particularly in a country in which the investment in higher education and in the scientific system soared in this period. The situation in Spain differed as the labour market was already more liberalised, and there was not such a need to combine further liberalization with ALMP or greater investment in the scientific system. The priority in Spain has thus been further investment in the vocational system and apprenticeships and not in higher education. We argue that faced with similar problems, governments adopted different strategies showing that political ideas and historical trajectories play a key role in policy-making. These strategies and paths influence labour market outcomes, including graduates’ employability.

International Journal of Social WelfareVolume 28, Issue 4 p. 350-357 Guest Editorial Youth employment in Europe: Coordination as a crucial dimension Jale Tosun, Jale Tosun Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, GermanySearch for more papers by this authorFelix Hörisch, Felix Hörisch Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, GermanySearch for more papers by this authorPaulo Marques, Paulo Marques Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), DINÂMIA'CET-IUL, Lisboa, PortugalSearch for more papers by this author Jale Tosun, Jale Tosun Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, GermanySearch for more papers by this authorFelix Hörisch, Felix Hörisch Institute of Political Science, Heidelberg University, Heidelberg, GermanySearch for more papers by this authorPaulo Marques, Paulo Marques Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), DINÂMIA'CET-IUL, Lisboa, PortugalSearch for more papers by this author First published: 25 July 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsw.12403Citations: 9Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume28, Issue4Special Issue: Youth employment in Europe: Coordination as a crucial dimensionOctober 2019Pages 350-357 RelatedInformation

During the economic crisis, youth unemployment grew exponentially in many European countries. It was argued that countries with a high level of firm involvement in the provision of initial vocational training were better equipped to address this problem. Boosting workplace‐based training was therefore seen as the right strategy to tackle unemployment. Using Denmark, Spain and the UK as case studies, this article analyses how countries with different skill formation systems have improved this type of training. While the UK reinforced the voluntaristic character of its training regime, Denmark improved the quality of its vocational education, and Spain made reforms to the training and apprenticeship contract. Interestingly, the countries achieved different results. To explain this divergence, it is argued that while the reforms made in the UK and Denmark were compatible with the national institutions and coordination mechanisms, this was not the case in Spain, where reforms were implemented in a non‐complementary way.Key Practitioner Message: After the economic crisis it was argued that countries with a high level of firm involvement in the provision of initial VET were better equipped to fight youth unemployment. The study analysed how countries with different skill formation systems improved this type of training and assessed their relative success. The article shows that when implementing reforms policy makers must take into account the institutions and mechanisms of coordination that prevail in each country. Otherwise, reforms may be unsuccessful.

Este artigo visa demonstrar a trajetória síncrona da vida de uma comunidade pobre de Recife e sua líder. Através deste relato, faz-se uma análise das transformações sociourbanas decorrentes da intervenção urbanística sofrida pela comunidade em 2010, das quais resultam inferências sobre a formação do espaço urbano da cidade e de suas relações com os pobres. Utilizou-se a História Oral como metodologia e as memórias e as histórias de vida dos ex-moradores como fontes. Foram utilizados os conceitos de “tática” e “estratégia” de Michel de Certeau para operacionalizar as análises. Este acontecimento pôs em movimento atores sociais, cujas ações e reações não são uniformes nem podem ser previstas ou controladas, mas “fabricam” identidades, deslocam fronteiras e continuam indefinidamente a cartografar a cidade no movimento incessante da história.

This article examines the determinants of outsiderness among young people and thus contributes to the growing literature on dualization. Complementing the argument developed by Palier and Thelen-originally developed to characterize the situation in Continental Europe-we provide a new explanation to the kind of dualization (age-based) that characterizes Southern Europe, Anglo-Saxon countries and (a few) Nordic countries. High deindustrialization and social conflict are the cornerstone of the theoretical argument developed in this article. It is argued that the former reduces the share of available stable jobs and the latter brings about an uneven distribution of risk across different social groups. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), we show that these two factors are crucial to explain high levels of outsiderness among young people. To complement the fsQCA analysis, a qualitative discussion is provided of three case studies (Portugal, UK and Denmark).

Contrary to all expectations and policy goals, poverty is on the rise in the European Union (EU). In fact, one of the headline targets of the current Europe 2020 strategy is precisely to lift at least 20 million people out of the risk of poverty or social exclusion. This setback can be largely explained by the crisis. Eventually, cohesion and political legitimacy may be put in jeopardy. Therefore, the growth in poverty calls for the adoption of adequate policies at the European and domestic levels, taking into account past experience and the diversity of national contexts. However, the inability to tackle poverty was already evident between 2000 and 2010. During this period, European social policy underwent a paradigm shift that emphasized activation measures rather than just income redistribution. This article explains this change by arguing that the deepening of the internal market, European diversity and the goal of sustaining the core European acquis were the underlying reasons behind this transition. The impact of this change on poverty and inequality during the last decade is also assessed. Econometric estimations show that the drivers of poverty and the drivers of inequality are different, suggesting that distinct approaches are required for each of these problems. We claim that the traditional redistributive policies remain the most effective way of fighting poverty and that although activation policies have had a positive impact on reducing inequality, they have not been able to combat poverty effectively.

This dissertation analyzes, through an empirical study, the relationship between some of the features of Corporate Governance and Performance, of Portuguese and Spanish listed companies. Secondary data are used and a sample of 61 companies is considered, covering a period of four years (2010-2013). The main results suggest the existence of some indicators that significantly influence the performance of listed companies of Portugal and Spain. We found statistically significant evidence that allows us to infer that: there is a material adverse impact on the relationship between the concentration of ownership and performance; more shares held by the board of directors has a significant and positive impact on the company’s performance; performance is positively influenced by the number of members of the board; the fact of the boards possess high independence ratio is a positive factor with very significant impact on performance; the impact of the positive variation of the variable remuneration of executive directors average is a stimulating factor for performance; the size of the company and the fact that the accounts and reports were certified and audited by one of the BIG 4, have both a positive relationship with performance. In this way, we contribute to an enrichment of knowledge, adding some value to the vast international existing studies about corporate governance and performance.