Patrick Emmenegger

Oxford University Press has just accepted my manuscript, “The Power to Dismiss: Trade Unions and the Regulation of Job Security in Western Europe”, for publication. The book will be available in mid-2014. The book analyses the historical development of job security regulations, i.e. restrictions on employers’ right to hire and fire, in Western Europe from the end of the 19th century until the beginning of the 21st century. The book is based on empirical evidence from eight Western European countries (Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland), and answers three questions: First, how can we explain the historical development of job security regulations in industrialized Western democracies? Second, how can we explain contemporary cross-national variation in the level and types of job security regulations that we observe today? And finally, why, in the context of clear incentives and policy consensus, has it historically proven to be so difficult for some countries to reform job security regulations?

New publications (conditional accept) in Politics & Society and the Swiss Political Science Review. The manuscript “Religion and the Gender Vote Gap: Women’s Changed Political Preferences from the 1970s and 2010” explains why the gender vote gap has shifted direction. The manuscript “Why is it so Difficult to Reform Dismissal Protection?” discusses the reasons why dismissal protection reforms typically fail despite considerable international and domestic pressure.

I teach four courses this fall term (all in the programme “International Affairs”:

Comparative Political Economy (lecture, BA level)

Social Science Methodology: Qualitative Comparative Analysis and Fuzzy Sets (lecture, MA level)

The Political Regulation of Finance (seminar, MA level)

Method Seminar (seminar, PhD level)

Policy Network just published my ‘op-ed’ “The Rise of the Female-Friendly Party”, co-authored with Philip Manow. Here is a link to the text.

In short, we argue that with declining levels of religiosity in Western Europe, women have turned from religious core voters into socio-economic swing voters. This development is likely to turn the ‘female-unfriendly’ welfare states of Continental Europe in ‘female-friendly’ ones.

Good news about the dualization project:

An article on the dualization project, entitled “Structural Change and the Politics of Dualization” is forthcoming in the journal Rassegna Italiana di Sociologica.

A book review by Michael Gebel has appeared in West European Politics (2013, vol. 36, no. 3).

Finally, the Korea Labor Institute is about to publish a Korean translation of “The Age of Dualization”.

My inaugural lecture at the University of St. Gallen took place last Tuesday (March 19). It was a great event. I hope everybody enjoyed it as much as I did! The title of the talk was “Welche Rolle für die Politik in der Politischen Ökonomie?”. Here is the text (in German).

Busy summer ahead! I am presenting papers at the annual Council for European Studies conference in Amsterdam, the annual Society for the Advancement of Socio-Economics conference in Milan and the ECPR General Conference in Bordeaux. The papers’ titles are:

Emmenegger, Patrick (2013): Job Security Regulations in the Age of Dualization: From Drift to Layering (Bordeaux).

Emmenegger, Patrick (2013): The Paradox of Power: Dismissal Protection before the Red Wave (Milan).

De la Porte, Caroline and Patrick Emmenegger (2013): When the Government and the Courts are at Odds: ECJ Rulings and the Fixed-Term Directive (Amsterdam).

Emmenegger, Patrick (2013): Meaningful Comparisons: Different Explanatory Approaches in Case Study rRsearch and the Analysis of Political Reforms (Amsterdam).

I am also teaching at the ESPAnet doctoral workshop in Mannheim, the ECPR summer school in Methods and Techniques in Ljubljana and the NordWel/Reassess summer school in Reykjavik.

Just finalized a book review of Matthieu Leimgruber’s “Solidarity without the State? Business and the Shaping of the Swiss Welfare State, 1890-2000 ” (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). It’s a great book that should be read by anybody interested in Swiss politics and welfare state development. The book review will appear in the Swiss Political Science Review some time this year.

My former colleagues at the University of Southern Denmark have just launched a new master programme in comparative public policy and welfare studies. This master programme is a great opportunity for everybody interested in comparative welfare state research. Find out more on their website or on their facebook page.

Rude awakening on the 23rd of December! Instead of enjoying an nice holiday break at my parents’ place, we had to hurry back to St. Gallen to check what it is left of our home. A fire in the neighbouring house has also destroyed much of our own. Luckily, nobody got hurt. See below for a picture of the fire (you can see our home in the middle (left of the two firemen) and the neighbouring house on the right).