Regulating labor markets in the age of flexibility: Fast policy and the political economy of workfare

Through an examination of Anglo-American policy transfer in welfare-to-work/workfare, this dissertation explores the processes and implications of trans-Atlantic policy transfer in the fields of employment and social policy. I carry out a two-part investigation using a framework for examining the political economy of neo-liberal labor market policymaking that is informed by regulation theory and by the labor market segmentation approach of the Cambridge School. First, I explore how the institutional underpinnings of labor markets are being transformed through government policies aimed at re-regulating flows in and out of the lower reaches of the labor market. Second, I examine the processes through which this transfer of policy ideas occurs, developing the concept of “fast policy” to characterize ongoing changes in the modes and content of employment policymaking.; Relying on field interviews with policy actors in Britain, I explore recent changes in policymaking processes that have facilitated the “exporting” of U.S. policy lessons to Britain. Fast policy is seen as altering long-accepted modes of policymaking as well as leading to the spread of a set of policy generics associated with the American Model of labor market governance. As both a mode of policymaking and an avenue for the dissemination of neo-liberal policy lessons, fast policy is associated with a regressive turn in labor market regulation. The dissertation concludes by offering a refined framework through which the political economy of policy transfer might be further explored.