Flexibility and security: an asymmetrical relationship?
6. The national context and its impact
on the configuration of flexicurity
policies through a comparative
approach of 4 different countries:
Denmark, the Netherlands, Spain
and Greece
The way each country responds to the socio-economic challenges, such as competitive pres-
sures, high unemployment, industrial restructuring, or simply globalisation, depends on a variety of
inextricably linked socio-economic, political and cultural factors that need to be taken into account:
the institutional context, the political and historic legacy, the structure of the economy, the labour
market and welfare systems, and the absence or presence of a consensus culture are amongst the
most prominent. This is also the case with the flexicurity policy agenda that all EU countries have
agreed to endorse.
Why is it that balanced trade-offs between business and labour are possible in some countries
whilst not in others? What makes unions and labour accept wage restraint, or greater work flexibility,
with some form of compensation, whilst others refuse even to discuss the issue? Why do businesses
in some national contexts behave responsibly, whilst in others not? Why is the state a credible and
reliable interlocutor in particular countries and not in others? This is an example of the range of
questions related to the flexicurity agenda that need to be addressed by a comparative analysis of
four EU countries with a distinct development path, or “variety of capitalism”: Denmark, the Neth-
erlands, Spain and Greece.
Comparative analyses are useful because they encourage a critical approach of what is considered
as the norm or “conventional wisdom” and shed light on the huge diversity of factors at play, of
possible pathways, and of national idiosyncrasies.
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