The political economy of Public Employment Services: measurement and disempowered empowerment?
Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) and Public Employment Services (PES) are related components of the European Union and member state labour market policy. Typically, PES are analysed in terms of a narrow concern with efficiency and effectiveness of service. In this paper, we argue
that PES are constituents in broader processes. They are not just means to facilitate employment, they are also part of transmission mechanisms for a political economy of competitiveness. They play a particular role in governance processes, and so serve to produce and reproduce power relations
that are intrinsic to those processes. We argue that the technical ways that PES have been managed over recent decades has contributed to broader processes of disempowering labour, through depoliticized management practices. We argue that attempts at even limited re-empowerment of labour would
require a repoliticization of these management practices.
Keywords: Political economy; Public Employment Services; governance; scale; the European Union
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: 1: Social Sciences, University of Derby, Derby, UK 2: Faculty of Business and Law, Leeds Beckett University, Leeds, UK
Publication date: 02 January 2020
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