The Political Economy of Collective Skill Formation

ISBN-13: 9780199599431 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 380 str.

Marius R Busemeyer

Opis

Education, skill formation, and training continue to be important areas of consideration for both public policy and research. This book examines the particular types of vocational training known as collective skill formation systems, whereby the training (often firm-based apprenticeships) is collectively organized by businesses and unions with state support and cooperation in execution, finance, and monitoring.
With contributions from leading academics, this book is the first to provide a comprehensive analysis of the varying historical origins of, and recent developments in, vocational training systems, offering in-depth studies on coordinated market economies, namely Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Denmark. It also contains comparative chapters that analyse how these countries react to common challenges such as deindustrialization, labour market stratification, academic drift, gender inequalities, and Europeanization.
Whereas previous research has focused on the differences between various kinds of skill regimes, this book focuses on explaining institutional variety within the group of collective skill formation systems. The development of skill formation systems is regarded as a dynamic political process, dependent on the outcome of various political struggles regarding such matters as institutional design and transformations during critical junctures in historical development.

Recenzje

In an era of revived political and societal interest for vocational education and similar systems of formation around the globe, the understanding of the history, the foundations, and the institutional subtleties and differences has become the key to understand the functions and dysfunctions of systems of collective skill formation. In this respect this book fills important gaps in the current knowledge and provides an excellent overview of the existing literature. Therefore I can only praise it as the indispensable source and base for more scholarly work on the political economy of collective skills formation in the future!

O autorze

Marius R. Busemeyer is a Professor of Political Science and head of an Emmy Noether research group at the University of Konstanz. Prior to this, he was a senior researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne. His research focuses on the comparative political economy of education regimes and welfare states, public spending, individual social policy preferences, and theories of institutional change. Christine Trampusch is Professor of International Comparative Political Economy and Economic Sociology at the University of Cologne. Prior to this, she was Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics at the University of Berne. Her research centers on the study of the origins and changes of welfare states, industrial relations, and skill formation systems, in a historical and comparative perspective.