Converging Policy Ideas, Divergent Outcomes. Varieties of Active Inclusion in Europe

This article contributes to the growing scholarships on ideational political economy and on labor market regulation, by providing a systematic analysis of the idea of active inclusion and its three core principles: activation, conditionality and individualization. In 2008 this idea was relaunched by the European Commission through a new recommendation and the financial incentive of the European social fund was bound to its implementation. Three comparative case studies are used to assess active inclusion transposition and implementation at the local level in Spain, France and Sweden. The article demonstrates that despite the ostensible convergence towards the idea of active inclusion, its translation into local measures is rather different. Its core principles are subjected to a process of interpretation from below, which gives them very diverse meanings. The active inclusion idea is widely developed in a locally specific fashion, with significant implications for policymaking. To explain the resulting typology of local variations of the same policy idea, the article brings into focus the interplay between the structure – historical legacies and the institutional organizations ‒ and the agency of competing actors that participate in the local governance of active inclusion. In particular, it shows the role played by political bodies, industrial relations, third sector organizations and street level bureaucrats in shaping the different local interpretations of active inclusion.