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Slovenian Employment Policy: ‘Soft’Europeanisation by ConsensusMyrto Tsakatika aa University of GlasgowPublished online: 09 Mar 2012.
To cite this article: Myrto Tsakatika (2012) Slovenian Employment Policy: ‘Soft’ Europeanisation byConsensus, Europe-Asia Studies, 64:4, 673-693, DOI: 10.1080/09668136.2012.660765
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Slovenian Employment Policy: ‘Soft’
Europeanisation by Consensus
MYRTO TSAKATIKA
Abstract
Slovenian employment policy was subject to ‘soft’ Europeanisation despite the lack of normative
resonance between entrenched policy ideas and new policy ideas embedded in the European Union’s
Employment Strategy. The key mechanisms at work are shown to be voluntary policy transfer and
diffusion, rather than strategic use of Europe by key domestic actors to bring about policy change. This
article argues that normative resonance is not a necessary condition for ‘soft’ Europeanisation and
highlights the importance of other domestic factors, such as norms of consensus-seeking and relative
independence from international financial capital as mediating factors that can explain policy impact.
EUROPE’S ROLE IN THE NEW GLOBALISED ECONOMY, demographic trends and
changes in the structure of the family have thrown up new challenges for the
increasingly interdependent European employment regimes (Zeitlin 2009). Yet the
diversity of European welfare states (Esping-Andersen 1990) and ‘varieties of
capitalism’ (Hall & Soskice 2001) which incorporate different sets of values, norms,
institutions and practices of employment policy (Rhodes 2005) have persistently posed
serious constraints to the emergence of substantive consensus on a common European
policy (Scharpf 2002).
In an attempt to address this state of affairs, the 1997 Treaty of Amsterdam made
employment policy a ‘matter of common concern’ and called upon member states to
coordinate their employment policies (Treaty of Amsterdam, Title VIII).1 The
European Employment Strategy (EES) was agreed upon later on in 1997 in a Special
Jobs Summit held in Luxembourg (Goetschy 1999). Member states were active
participants while candidate states were encouraged to ‘shadow’ the Strategy. The four
original priorities of the EES were employability, entrepreneurship, adaptability and
equal opportunities.
The author would like to thank Maurizio Carbone, Magnus Feldmann, Kelly Kollman, Manos
Matsaganis, Dimitri A. Sotiropoulos, Alasdair Young and two anonymous referees for their
comments. The usual disclaimer applies.1Treaty of Amsterdam amending the Treaty on European Union, the Treaties establishing the
European Communities and Related Acts, Official Journal C340, 10 November 1997.
EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES
Vol. 64, No. 4, June 2012, 673–693
ISSN 0966-8136 print; ISSN 1465-3427 online/12/040673-21 ª 2012 University of Glasgow
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09668136.2012.660765
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‘Employability’ involved the promotion of active labour market policies and the
introduction of a preventive and activating approach to unemployment. ‘Entrepre-
neurship’ involved measures to facilitate the opening of new jobs in small and
medium-sized enterprises, while ‘adaptability’ referred to measures to introduce
flexible arrangements in working time and work organisation and the concept of
lifelong learning. ‘Equal opportunities’ involved promoting equality at work as well as
reconciling work and family life (Goetschy 1999). Following an evaluation of the first
five years of the EES (CEC 2002), it was decided to streamline it with other economic
and social policy coordination processes in the context of the Lisbon Strategy for Jobs
and Growth.
Despite frequent reviews of the annual guidelines the core philosophy of the EES
did not undergo significant changes over the Strategy’s first phase (Watt 2004), which
is the phase examined in this article (1997–2002). ‘Employability’ was ‘at the heart’ of
EES (Lefresne 1999, p. 460), reflecting a ‘Third Way’ approach (Visser 2000, p. 450).
‘Employability’ reflects a new focus on individual as opposed to collective
responsibility for employment and unemployment. Being employable means remain-
ing competitive in the labour market by obtaining appropriate competencies and
skills, being flexible and willing to continue to learn throughout one’s lifetime (Garsten
& Jacobson 2004).
The EES has been considered a model for the new, promising, ‘soft’ approach to
EU governance which takes national diversity into account while facilitating the
exchange of best practices between member states and stimulating long-term
voluntary policy convergence in the employment field. The innovation of the ‘soft’
approach lies in triggering policy change by ‘framing’ and learning, rather than
through legal imposition of EU standards. Extensive academic debates have taken
place on the merits and effectiveness of ‘soft’ as opposed to ‘hard’ Europeanisation
(Knill & Lehmkuhl 2002; Sedelmeier 2006), in the context of which domestic actors
are argued to respond to Europeanisation pressures according to the logic of
appropriateness rather than according to the logic of consequences (March & Olsen
1984).
The few comparative studies that have been conducted on the EES, most of which
focus on the EU-15, have indicated that its impact on the employment regimes of the
member states often goes beyond cognitive shifts in policy-makers’ perceptions to
shifts in national policy-making agendas and concrete policy change (de la Porte &
Pochet 2002; Zeitlin et al. 2005; Zeitlin & Heidenreich 2009). More research is required
across the EU-27 to address the core question of when and how the EES triggers
domestic policy change.
According to the normative resonance hypothesis, the better the fit between EES
norms and national employment policy norms, the greater is the likelihood of change
(Sedelmeier 2006; Lopez-Santana 2006). If this is the case, the EES simply reinforces
existing policy ‘paths’; change cannot be expected in countries whose regimes are not
in line with the EES. An alternative hypothesis is that normative resonance is not a
necessary condition of impact (Falkner et al. 2005). The latter may occur where other
domestic factors are favourable. If this is the case, the EES might indeed be shown to
open possibilities for policy experimentation leading to substantive change even in
countries whose employment regimes are not in line with the EES.
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In this article I will examine the impact of the EES on Slovenia, not only because the
Slovenian case is under studied, but also because it constitutes a ‘least likely’ case for
policy change through processes of ‘soft’ Europeanisation. First, what can be observed
in Slovenia in the period under consideration is a clear lack of fit between the norms
embodied in the Bismarckian corporatist employment policy regime established in the
early 1990s following the country’s independence from Yugoslavia (Ignjatovic et al.
2002) and ‘Third Way’ EES norms, such as ‘activation’ and ‘making work pay’ which
came into play upon the establishment of the EES in 1997. Second, in terms of the
domestic mediating factors involved, Slovenian political elites share a broad
substantive policy consensus on economic and social policy, which could be expected
to obstruct policy change (Mailand 2009). To complicate things further, Slovenia
operates on a consensual system of political and interest intermediation, where the
high number of ‘veto points’ could also be expected to present obstacles to change
(Haverland 2000). Surprisingly, however, change did occur: by 2004 when Slovenia
joined the EU, EES ‘employability’ ideas strongly informed policy thinking, the policy
agenda and policy programmes (Kolari�c et al. 2009, pp. 448–49). Slovenia thus
presents us with an interesting ‘puzzle’.
The case study adopts a longitudinal research design, comparing the employment
policy regimes in Slovenia before and after the emergence of the EES in order to
demonstrate the lack of normative resonance and identify policy change. It then
examines whether change can be attributed to mechanisms of ‘soft’ Europeanisation.
Subsequently, it examines the relevance of key domestic factors for the occurrence of
‘soft’ Europeanisation, in particular the country’s structural dependence on the EU
and domestic consensus on employment policy. The study is based on the examination
of key policy documents, the secondary literature and six semi-structured interviews,
held between December 2003 and September 2004 in Ljubljana with senior officials
involved in policy making in the employment field during 1991–2004, who were
questioned on employment policy change during that period.
Slovenian employment policy from independence to EU membership (1991–2004)
Before the EES
Under Yugoslav self-management full employment was ensured. Unemployment
benefits were only allocated to a very small number of individuals who were hard to
place or were considered unable to work (Svetlik 1992, p. 60). Despite being the most
economically robust of all the former Yugoslav republics, the independent Republic of
Slovenia came up against an unprecedented unemployment crisis in the early 1990s.
The causes lay in the country’s transition to the market economy, company
restructuring and the loss of Yugoslav export markets. A substantial number of
workers were made redundant, while considerable potential pressure on the
unemployment insurance system was eased through early retirement schemes
(Mencinger 2000, p. 203). Between 1988 and 1992 over 150,000 people, 15% of all
insurance payers, took retirement owing to old age or disability (National VET
Observatory of Slovenia 1999, p. 12). The consequence was a drastic reduction of the
activity rate (from 68.6% in 1991 to 57.7% in 1993), which mainly affected older
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workers (Svetlik 1997, p. 223). Furthermore, there was a worrying high school-
dropout rate, particularly from vocational and technical secondary education, and a
collapse of the pre-existing system of adult education (Svetlik 1993; Kovac et al. 2002).
These developments rendered young, poorly skilled adults vulnerable to unemploy-
ment and hindered the retraining of older workers who had been made redundant. As
a result, registered unemployment rose dramatically from 1.6% in the late 1980s to a
peak of 14.4% in 1993.
Transition resulted in uncertainty about the policies that would best suit the
country’s socio-economic transformation and therefore created conditions of choice in
employment policy. Slovenia opted for gradual adjustment, retaining high levels of
social protection for the unemployed in order to achieve a smooth and inclusive
passage to the market economy (Svetlik 1993, p. 196).
The 1991 Employment and Unemployment Insurance Act established widely
inclusive eligibility criteria for the receipt of unemployment benefits and involved
relatively high levels and long duration of benefits (Orazem & Vodopivec 1994, p. 11).
Unemployment insurance was compulsory for all people in employment. The
unemployment benefit covered all those that had been employed for more than nine
months. The duration of unemployment benefit ranged from three months to two
years, depending on the years of employment and age. The level of substitution
reached 70% of the last wage (60% after three months) and could not be lower than
80% of the guaranteed minimum income. After the termination of unemployment
benefit, an unemployed person was eligible for means tested unemployment assistance
for a maximum of three years, including the time that person had been on
unemployment benefit (Svetlik 1992, p. 61). Those out of work who could no longer
claim unemployment benefit or unemployment assistance were entitled to means tested
non-contributory social assistance for an unlimited period, renewable every six months
(National VET Observatory of Slovenia 1999).
Despite the predominance of passive measures, an active approach was also
introduced in the early 1990s (Svetlik 1992). The first active labour market policies
(ALMPs) introduced between 1991 and 1992 involved four categories of programmes,
mainly, wage and job subsidies, self-employment support programmes, training and
public works programmes. Nonetheless, the active labour market policies introduced
operated on a ‘passive’ philosophy: participation of unemployment benefit or
assistance recipients in the active programmes was voluntary (Svetlik 1997, pp. 222–
23), while no effective controls on eligibility were operative (World Bank 1998).
Furthermore, there was a lack of coordination between local social work centres that
administered social assistance and the Employment Service of Slovenia, responsible
for administering both unemployment benefits and active labour market policies.
Vocational education and training was widely perceived to be problematic and its
reform was long overdue in the early 1990s (Svetlik 1993). The weaknesses of the
vocational education and training system were argued to be the rigid and centralised
state regulation of occupational standards, inherited from socialist centralised
planning, and the fact that vocational education and training was school-based only,
with an inadequate practical dimension and weak responsiveness to the needs of
companies and individuals. This was seen by many as contributing to Slovenia’s
significant secondary-school dropout problem and its consequences for youth
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unemployment. Young peoples’ employment rates were low, making them a group in
need of active policy targeting.
The concept of ‘lifelong learning’ featured in the 1995 White Paper on Education,
but had been introduced earlier in policy-makers’ deliberations. It first appeared in
1991, in the context of setting up the Institute for Adult Education, whose task was to
promote the development of ‘lifelong learning’ by research, counselling and
development of educational activities (Republic of Slovenia, Ministry of Education
and Sport 1995). The 1995 White Paper acknowledged the particular importance of
developing a strategy of ‘lifelong learning’ in Slovenia, particularly in view of
demographic factors, and especially Slovenia’s small and aging population which would,
in the future, require adults to retrain more than once for staying in a quickly evolving
work environment, low levels of overall educational attainment, and the phenomenon of
a large population of poorly qualified young adults with low employment opportunities
(Republic of Slovenia, Ministry of Education and Sport 1995).
The core architecture of Slovenia’s unemployment insurance system, which had
been modelled on the German scheme since 1975, was maintained after 1991
(Ignjatovic et al. 2002). It was occupation-based and contributions-based, considering
rights to derive from employment and paid work, and providing for corporatist
management of insurance funds and policy-making decisions, along the lines of a
typical Bismarckian continental welfare regime (Martin & Palier 2008). Tripartite
governance structures were established in the insurance fund for unemployment and
the management board of the Public Employment Service of Slovenia. The active
involvement of the social partners, particularly employers, in setting occupational
standards reviewing curricula, providing training and participating in decision-making
procedures in vocational education and training and adult education was also
institutionalised. Employers and employees were in agreement in ensuring the well-
being of the unemployed in order to maintain their living standards and preserve social
cohesion. The state was perceived as facilitator, coordinator and ultimate guarantor of
the system.
Despite the fact that the unemployment crisis had subsided by the mid-1990s, the
unemployment insurance system had begun to show its limits. By the mid-1990s the
number of registered unemployed was roughly double that measured by Labour Force
Survey data. In 1997, for example, registered unemployment amounted to 14.4%,
while survey unemployment was 7.4% (ESS 1998), which demonstrated that a
considerable number of beneficiaries were not unemployed. Undeclared work and lack
of controls were argued to have rendered the system of allocating benefits inefficient
and extremely costly. Unemployment insurance came to rely principally on state
contributions, while social assistance funding came exclusively from the state budget
(Ignjatovic et al. 2002). The problems had been identified by the mid-1990s and
reforms were deemed necessary. Policy-makers were in search of ideas on how to go
about it.
After the EES
In October 1998, the National Assembly adopted significant changes to the
Unemployment and Employment Insurance Act (Republic of Slovenia 1998). The
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structure of the system was not changed but the duration and level of benefits were
moderately limited, although by no means radically scaled down compared to
neighbouring countries, in line with the Slovenian gradual approach (Kolari�c et al.
2009). The crux of the 1998 reform was that receipt of benefits was made conditional
upon beneficiaries’ availability for employment, their actively seeking a job,
acceptance of any suitable job or participation in any training or other suitable
programme of active employment policy available and their not being found to have
other sources of income or work in the grey economy. The Employment Service of
Slovenia was charged with preparing detailed individual employment plans in
cooperation with each registered unemployed person, inspired by the British model
(Ignjatovic et al. 2002, p. 202). Clearly, core EES ideas, such as raising the
employment rate, activation and ‘making work pay’, had somehow made their way
into Slovenian employment policy.
The next step towards the adoption of EES norms in Slovenia seems to have come
soon after, in the context of the 1999 Background Study for the Employment Policy
Review for Slovenia, conducted under the auspices of the vocational education and
training Observatory of Slovenia, by Slovenian experts (National VET Observatory of
Slovenia 1999). This was the first comprehensive account of the employment policy
situation in Slovenia, clearly written with the EES framework in mind. In the
Introduction there is mention of what is taking place in ‘European countries’, directly
referring to the promotion of active policies, the activation trend, the emphasis on
development of human potential, while the lifelong learning perspective is implied
(National VET Observatory of Slovenia 1999, p. 5). Despite the fact that the EES was
not explicitly mentioned in the National VET Observatory of Slovenia, EES discourse
was clearly used. ‘Employability’ appears 10 times in the text, the word ‘active’ 42
times (as for example in active measures, policies, programmes or approach), the word
‘education’ 326 times and ‘training’ 124 times. A considerable part is dedicated to
grouping existing (at the time) active programmes under the four pillars of the EES,
that is, employability, entrepreneurship, adaptability and equal opportunities
(National VET Observatory of Slovenia 1999, pp. 67–75).
It was on the basis of the Background Study that two key documents concerning the
explicit adoption of the EES framework by Slovenia were published in 2000. The
Strategic Goals of Labour Market Development up to 2006, Employment Policy and its
Implementation Programmes, called for by the Accession Partnership signed by Slovenia
in 1998, were discussed and adopted by the National Assembly in 2000 (Republic of
Slovenia 2000b). The National Strategy appealed to the European ‘global approach’
following from the Treaty of Amsterdam, the EES and the Lisbon Agenda. The global
approach meant bringing together employment, education and economic policies to
create synergies towards the aims of combating unemployment and raising the levels of
employment, by raising the educational level of the population, lifelong learning and
active labour market policies to ensure equity and labour market efficiency. The strategic
goals of labour market development for the period 2000–2006 in Slovenia clearly
mirrored the employment goals set out in the EES (Republic of Slovenia 2000b, pp. 4–6).
A Joint Assessment Paper (JAP) was signed between the Slovenian Ministry of
Labour, Family and Social Affairs and DG Employment in the same year (Republic of
Slovenia, Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs & the European Commission
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2000). Its aim was to articulate: ‘an agreed set of employment and labour market
objectives necessary to advance the country’s labour market transformation, to make
progress in adapting the employment system so as to be able to implement the
Employment Strategy and to prepare it for accession to the European Union’
(Republic of Slovenia, Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs & the European
Commission 2000). The single most pressing problem identified in the Slovenian JAP
was the implementation of vocational education and training reform. Progress on the
establishment of active labour market policies, tightening of eligibility for benefits and
controls, activation, the introduction of a first phase of vocational education and
training reforms and structures for lifelong learning were hailed in the JAP as
important steps in the ‘right’ direction. The general thrust of the paper was that all the
important reforms had indeed been introduced, though they needed to be further
strengthened, pursued and implemented. It was, therefore, not a question of revisiting
the basic employment policy principles, norms and ideas, but of further proceeding
down the road already taken.
A 2002 comparative research project on Slovenian and Hungarian employment and
training policies, which commenced in 1999, noted how ‘lifelong learning’ was
certainly present in policy discourses in 1999, but it was not as predominant as in 2002
when the project was completed (Grootings 2002, p. 7). There was also evidence that
under the EES framework, the conceptual link between employment and vocational
education and training or ‘lifelong learning’ policies was strengthened after the late
1990s, under the influence of the EES and the Lisbon Agenda (ETF 2003, pp. 71–72).
Finally, Vidmar has noted ‘a remarkable shift from passive to active measures to
combat unemployment’ after the adoption of the EES (Vidmar 2001, p. 3). Stanojevic
drew on Ministry of Labour data from 2001 to demonstrate the gradual equalisation
of funding for passive and active measures which took place from the second half of
the 1990s to the first years after 2000, showing that this was achieved mainly by
reducing the amount spent on passive policies. He associated this development with
the Employment Strategy (Stanojevic 2004, pp. 364–67).
It becomes clear that while the first active labour market policies and the concept of
‘lifelong learning’ had been introduced in Slovenia from 1991, that is, before the EES
was established, it was not until the 1998 Unemployment Act that a clear conceptual
shift from passive to active employment policies took place and the discourse of
‘making work pay’ was introduced, while a closer link between education and work
was drawn between 1998 and 2002. The 1998 Law on Changes marked a strong
agenda shift from dealing with unemployment to raising the employment rate,
activation and retraining, ‘making work pay’ and the preventive approach. A clear
shift in the policy reform agenda from passive to active measures and substantive
policy change in line with those shifts were clear consequently soon after 1998. The
1998 Law on Changes seems to be the crucial milestone marking the impact of EES
‘employability’ norms upon Slovenian employment policy. It ignited considerable
policy change.
According to the normative resonance hypothesis, adoption of EES norms should
not have been easy as they did not ‘fit’ well with Bismarckian principles. In particular,
the cutbacks on the levels and duration of unemployment benefits and the
introduction of sanctions were in the direction of changing the purpose of
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unemployment insurance from maintaining the standard of living of the unemployed
to averting poverty while providing incentives and opportunities for the unemployed
to return to the job market. Such policies emphasise individuals’ responsibility as
citizens to work and retrain rather than the responsibility of the social partners to
contribute to social cohesion by supporting the living standards of the unemployed.
Yet, change did occur and EES norms were adopted.
Mechanisms of ‘soft’ Europeanisation
Was this an occurrence of ‘soft’ Europeanisation? In other words, can the adoption of
EES norms be linked in any way to mechanisms of ‘soft’ Europeanisation? The ‘soft’
mechanisms through which, it has been argued, the EES influences national policy can
be distinguished between ‘bottom-up’ mechanisms, such as voluntary policy learning,
mimicking and creative appropriation of the EES nationally whereby domestic actors
are empowered to exploit misfits in policy norms in order to pursue reforms (Zeitlin
2009), and ‘top-down’ mechanisms, such as ideational or institutional diffusion,
socialisation through discourses or peer pressure and shaming (Buchs 2007, pp. 22–
26). In the case of ‘bottom-up’ mechanisms the country voluntarily emulates or ‘draws
lessons’ from EU policies to improve its own policies by acquiring additional material
or symbolic resources to implement a domestic reform agenda (Jacoby 2004). In the
case of ‘top-down’ mechanisms, the EU encourages normative convergence with the
relevant EU policies. Drawing a distinction between ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’
mechanisms of soft Europeanisation does not imply that the processes involved are
mutually exclusive. Rather, the two can, on many occasions, be seen to work in
parallel, as is often pointed out in the literature (Trubek & Trubek 2005).
Voluntary lesson drawing (bottom-up)
Even before the EES, Slovenian policy-makers in the employment field actively
engaged in what Dolowitz and Marsh have called ‘voluntary bilateral policy transfer’
(1996, pp. 345–46) from other West European countries. In the 1970s, Slovenian
policy-makers had modelled the system of unemployment insurance on the German
system (Ignjatovic et al. 2002). In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Ivan Svetlik, a
leading Slovenian academic (and who was appointed Minister of Labour in November
2008) who was well acquainted with Scandinavian experience, introduced the concept
and practice of active labour market policies into academic debate. This discussion
was soon taken up by government officials in the Ministry of Labour, Family and
Social Affairs which led to the swift setting up of Active Labour Market Policy
programmes in the late 1980s and early 1990s.2 The early 1990s was also a period of
intensive bilateral learning, initiated by Slovenian policy-makers from the Ministry of
Labour and the Employment Service of Slovenia, particularly with regard to the
design and implementation of active labour market policies, ideas having been drawn
largely from Germany, Austria, Sweden, Finland and Ireland. Visits and the
organisation of workshops meant to lead to mutual learning and the exchange of
2Interview with Official D—former Ministry of Labour Adviser, 9 December 2003, Ljubljana.
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best practices have continued unhindered since, often making use of PHARE funding
after 1995, and for the most part initiated by Slovenian experts.3
The introduction of ‘activation’ and ‘making work pay’ concepts reflected in the
1998 Act can be attributed primarily to the ideational ‘pull’ of the first Luxembourg
Guidelines, announced in 1997 (European Council 1997). One policy maker
mentioned in interview that they thought Slovenian employment policy was influenced
by the EES partly because this would be ‘the way Slovenian policy would need to go
anyway, since it was going to join the European Union’,4 which appeared to imply
that in accession countries ‘soft’ Europeanisation functions as if it were ‘hard’
Europeanisation in practice (Grabbe 2003). However, further inquiry revealed that it
was the ‘pull’ rather than the ‘push’ factor that made the difference.
The Guidelines were considered the ‘latest international document’ which policy-
makers thought it important to take into account in order to be up-to-date with
contemporary policy trends.5 They were perceived by policy makers as ‘an
inspiration’, a valuable policy narrative, which they felt enriched their thinking
about the general direction and principles that policy change should take.6 The
perception that domestic change was needed was already established, given the
problems with the system of unemployment insurance that had become clear by
the mid-1990s. The EES guidelines ‘met’ the lack of a clear direction for reform on
the part of policy makers.7 Policy makers clearly pointed out that EES norms
‘would have been adopted anyway’, that is, independently of the country’s
prospective accession to the European Union, as they were thought to be the most
attractive option available for domestic reform at the time.8 Voluntary policy
transfer therefore seems to have been the primary force at work, a key mechanism
of ‘soft’ Europeanisation.
Diffusion and socialisation (top-down)
The aim of the JAP process was diffusion of EES norms and socialisation of policy
elites into EES norms and practices. The implementation of JAP priorities was
monitored by the Commission and regular evaluation on the progress made was
conducted in special seminars that took place on an annual basis. These were
accompanied by a thorough reporting procedure from the Slovenian side, which
included annual analytical Implementation Reports and Progress Reports, monitoring
the labour market policy, programmes and future activities (Republic of Slovenia,
Ministry of Labour, Family and Social Affairs 2003, p. 3).
As of 2000, Slovenia started to shadow the EES by periodically producing National
Action Plans, as provided for in the National Strategy and called for by the JAP
3Interview with Official C—Employment Service of Slovenia, 21 January 2004, Ljubljana.4Interview with Official C—Employment Service of Slovenia, 21 January 2004, Ljubljana.5Interview with Official C—Employment Service of Slovenia, 21 January 2004, Ljubljana.6Interview with Official C—Employment Service of Slovenia, 21 January 2004, Ljubljana.7Interview with Official C—Employment Service of Slovenia, 21 January 2004, Ljubljana.8Interviews with Official A—Slovenian Ministry of Labour, 13 July 2004, Ljubljana; Official E—
former Ministry of Labour Adviser, 15 January 2004, Ljubljana; Official C—Employment Service of
Slovenia, 21 January 2004, Ljubljana.
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process. The JAP process itself was proposed to the European Commission by the
Slovenian Minister of Labour at the time, Anton Rop.9 The aim was to ‘practise for
the real thing’, that is, for participation in the EES coordination process upon
membership.
The 2000–2001 National Employment Action Plan (Republic of Slovenia 2000),
built around the four pillars of the EES, addressed Slovenia’s policies that fell
under the relevant guidelines analytically and set in many cases specific quantitative
targets towards the realisation of its own programmes falling under the EES
guidelines for the specific year. Two officials in the Slovenian Ministry of Labour
were responsible for drafting the plans in close cooperation with the Employment
Service of Slovenia. Danish officials were based in the Ministry to help with
developing indicators in the context of a twinning exercise during 2003. Their
contribution was not deemed very helpful however, as they ‘did not always
understand the local context’.10 The social partners were also involved in the
preparation of the NEAPs, while an annual reporting procedure to the National
Assembly was envisaged.
In the first instance, implementing the JAP practically meant little more than
‘repackaging’ national policy. According to one experienced practitioner: ‘We fit the
policy programmes already running into the relevant boxes under the EU’s
employment guidelines’.11 Ministry officials pointed out that this process was seen
as ‘cumbersome, but necessary’, particularly since the European Commission was
systematically ‘monitoring’ the process. In the context of adapting to the EES, the
Ministry of Labour also engaged in horizontal coordination with other ministries,
such as the Ministries for Education, Health and Finance, a practice they were not
accustomed to.12 Yet, in due course, particularly as the first NAP (2004) was being
prepared, the prominence of these ideas, as well as the validity of linking them one to
the other, was further reinforced in the context of domestic employment policy
discourse, policy priorities and policy programmes, given the extra boost of legitimacy
they received from the fact that they could be shown to be associated with the
European Employment Strategy. ‘Lifelong learning’ and the activation trend are two
examples.
Clearly, despite the lack of normative resonance, ‘soft’ Europeanisation was the
key force at work in the Slovenian policy reforms of 1998 and the years
immediately following that reform. Mechanisms of ‘soft’ Europeanisation mattered,
both ‘bottom-up’ and ‘top-down’. Bottom-up mechanisms, particularly voluntary
policy transfer from the EU, were crucial in the initial cognitive and agenda shifts
that occurred, while top-down mechanisms, in particular diffusion through the JAP
process which involved periodic monitoring by the European Commission, initially
led to policy ‘repackaging’ but gradually served to further legitimate change,
socialise policy makers and contribute to the justification of policy shifts in line
with those changes.
9Interview with Official A—Slovenian Ministry of Labour, 13 July 2004, Ljubljana.10Interview with Official A—Slovenian Ministry of Labour, 13 July 2004, Ljubljana.11Interview with Official C—Employment Service of Slovenia, 21 January 2004, Ljubljana.12Interview with Official A—Slovenian Ministry of Labour, 13 July 2004, Ljubljana.
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Domestic mediating factors
If, as demonstrated above, despite the lack of normative resonance ‘soft’
Europeanisation did occur in Slovenian employment policy, the next challenge is to
understand why. We thus turn our attention to the domestic factors that can be
expected to mediate change, focusing on the political economy and domestic
consensus.
Political economy
Sleegers draws on a comparison of Latvia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, to
identify low dependency on international capital as a factor that renders candidate
countries more susceptible to EU rather than World Bank influence on labour market
policy reform (Sleegers 2005). Mailand, on the other hand, drawing on a comparison
of Denmark, the UK, Spain and Poland, finds that structural dependence on the EU
can be expected to facilitate EES induced ‘soft’ Europeanisation (Mailand 2009, p.
167). Can these findings be confirmed in the Slovenian case?
As part of Yugoslavia the Slovenian economy consistently achieved the strongest
economic performance among all of the federal states and it was no surprise that
independent Slovenia soon achieved the highest levels of per capita income among all
Central and East European countries in the early 1990s, comparable to that of the less
developed EU member states (Brinar & Svetli�ci�c 1999). From the early 1990s, Slovenia
enjoyed low levels of external debt, had low levels of FDI given that privatisation was
mainly internal, and achieved a balanced budget and a stable currency (Silva-Jauregui
2004).
There is clear evidence that the Slovenian political and policy-making elite were in a
position to disregard external pressures from the Bretton Woods institutions to adopt
economic and social policy reforms that went against their policy preferences, which
was not the case for most other post-socialist countries (with the exception of the
Czech Republic). This is demonstrated by the fact that despite strong World Bank
advice to implement ‘shock therapy’ in the early 1990s, that advice (notably by
Professor Jeffrey Sachs) which involved radically scaling down unemployment benefits
and tightening eligibility criteria for the receipt of such benefits was rejected by
Slovenian policy-makers.13 Drastic reforms in this direction were made in most other
Central and East European countries at the end of 1991 under the influence of the
World Bank (Palpant 2006, p. 14). The strength of the Slovenian economy and
prudent macroeconomic management meant that Slovenia was not subject to high
levels of dependence on international capital markets. The country did not have major
debts to the World Bank which meant that the institution had ‘no muscle’ over
Slovenia.14 This can explain why Slovenian policy-makers could afford to disregard
World Bank advice.
On the other hand, the eagerness of Slovenian policy-makers to adopt or emulate
EU economic, social and employment policies was equally evident. This can be related
13Interview with Official E—former Ministry of Labour Adviser, 15 January 2004, Ljubljana.14Interview with Official E—former Ministry of Labour Adviser, 15 January 2004, Ljubljana.
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to the economic and political advantages Slovenia stood to gain by joining the
European Union. The Slovenian economy is a small, open, export-oriented economy
located near the EU geographical centre. It relies by and large on external trade with
other EU countries, in particular Austria, Germany, France and Italy. Slovenia is also
regaining former Yugoslav markets and making inroads into South East European
markets, all of which are lined up to join the EU. The country’s long-term economic
interest has clearly been to secure full access to the common market.
In political and symbolic terms Slovenia was anxious to disassociate itself from the
instability that was spreading in the Balkans when it gained its independence from
Yugoslavia in 1991. Furthermore, it was thought that as a small country of two
million people Slovenia could only ensure a degree of sovereignty and exert some
policy influence at the international level by joining a larger regional bloc (Brinar &
Svetli�ci�c 1999, pp. 805–6). Joining the European Economic Area or engaging in closer
cooperation with other Central and East European countries were possible
alternatives, but going down either of those routes would mean that Slovenia would
not participate in making the rules of the single market and EMU. In political
economy terms, the EU was thus seen as the only attractive ‘game in town’.
Interview evidence confirms that the Ljubljana policy community in its largest part
was, throughout the 1990s, more open to suggestions from the EU while reacting more
cautiously towards the advice of experts coming from the World Bank.15 This seems to
have been the case also regarding employment policy. The 1998 changes were
influenced by Slovenian experts, some of whom had worked for the World Bank and
promoted the liberal model, but had however been seconded to the Slovenian Ministry
of Labour, Family and Social Affairs by the European Union between 1994 and 1998.16
In the early 1990s, at the peak of the unemployment crisis, World Bank experts had
advocated radically scaling down unemployment benefits and introducing strict controls
but their recommendations were disregarded. By the mid-1990s, as pointed out above,
the system of unemployment insurance was ‘ripe’ for reform and policy-makers were in
search of new ideas. It was only when the newly aired Luxemburg Guidelines pointed
towards solutions that coincided with World Bank experts’ advice on the issue of
reducing the generosity and length of unemployment benefits and activating passive
measures (National VET Observatory of Slovenia 1999), that the Slovenian policy-
making community as a whole became more receptive to these solutions.
There are strong grounds here to argue that the key features of the Slovenian
political economy, mainly the country’s low dependence on international financial
capital and the structure of trade, had some influence on policy-makers’ approach to
external policy advice. That approach can be summarised as being ‘negative’ toward
World Bank or IMF advice and ‘positive’ towards EU advice. The structural political
economic factors pointed out by Sleegers and Mailand can thus be considered
important mediating factors that facilitated the ‘soft’ Europeanisation of Slovenian
15Interviews with Official E—former Ministry of Labour Adviser, 15 January 2004, Ljubljana;
Official B—Association of Employers of Slovenia, 26 January 2004, Ljubljana; Official F—Slovenian
Trade Union Confederation, 7 September 2004, Ljubljana; and Official A—Slovenian Ministry of
Labour, 13 July 2004, Ljubljana.16Interview with Official E—former Ministry of Labour Adviser, 15 January 2004, Ljubljana.
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employment policy because they rendered Slovenian policy-makers more susceptible
to the ‘pull’ of the EES.
Domestic consensus
What stands out with regard to Slovenian policy-making in the employment field over
the period under examination (1991–2004) is its consensual character in both
substantive and procedural terms. Consensus on the broad parameters of employment
policy was evident in the policy narrative of the ‘social market economy’ and the
imperative of ‘social cohesion’ shared by the key actors involved in policy-making
decisions. Consensual, corporatist decision-making procedures determined policy
outcomes, including the 1998 Law on Changes which, as argued above, was the key
reform in the direction of the EES. Substantive consensus on employment policy can
be expected to act as a barrier to EES-induced change where there is a lack of
normative resonance (Mailand 2009, p. 167), as it was the case in Slovenia before 1998.
Furthermore, the institutional setup of Slovenian employment policy-making, which
involves multiple ‘veto points’, can also be expected to compound the obstacles to
policy change (Haverland 2000). The question that arises is why these factors did not
turn out to constitute obstacles to policy change.
The emergence of policy and policy-making consensus on employment policy in the
early 1990s must be understood against the background of national state formation.
Secession from Yugoslavia was a bold undertaking that would require Slovenian
political and economic elites to secure nothing short of domestic consensus on most of
the important decisions among political groups and the population at large (Sustersi�c
2004, p. 402). While the early moderate and reformist stance of the League of
Communists of Slovenia (Zveza Komunistov Slovenije, ZKS) allowed the gradual
liberalisation of the political system and the free expression of civil society
organisations from the 1980s, the wave of strike action that peaked in the last years
of the 1980s and the early 1990s under the first elected government of Slovenia,
composed mainly of newly formed parties of the centre-right, threatened to undermine
unity.17
The strikes were led by Slovenian trade unions which had emerged upon the
country’s independence, and which were distinctive among their Central and Eastern
European counterparts for their strength and unity (Galgoczi 2004), due to the
centralised structure of collective bargaining, the relatively high level of unionisation
of Slovenian workers and their capacity to mobilise their members in industrial action
over the period under discussion. The largest trade union, representing the majority of
private sector workers mainly from the manufacturing industry, the Association of
Free Slovenian Labour Unions (Zveza svobodnih sindikatov Slovenije, ZSSS), was a
reformed union from the communist period. Smaller trade unions, most of which
emerged after regime change in the early 1990s, such as the Independent Trade Union
(Konfederacija novih sindikatov Slovenij—Neodvisnost, KNSS), PERGAM 9 (Konfe-
deracija sindikatov Slovenije PERGAM, KSS–PERGAM), Trade Union Confedera-
tion 90 of Slovenia (Konfederacija sindikatov 90 Slovenije, K-90), the Alternative Trade
17For further discussion see Stanojevic (1997).
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Union (Alternativa) and Solidarity (Solidarnost), represented mainly public sector
workers (Stanojevic 2004).
The 1992 elections signified a decisive shift in voters’ preferences to the centre-left
and the emergence of the political forces that would dominate the party system
throughout the period under examination (Fink-Hafner 2006). The centre-left Liberal
Democracy of Slovenia (Liberalna demokracija Slovenije, LDS), successor to the
reformist Alliance of Socialist Youth of Slovenia (Zveza socialisti�cne mladine Slovenije,
ZSMS) which had played the part of internal opposition over the last years of the
previous regime, turned out to be the largest and most influential party, a necessary
partner for the formation of any coalition government almost uninterruptedly from
1992 to 2004 (Fink-Hafner 2006). Other major parties that at different times joined the
LDS in government were the United List of Social Democrats (Zdruzena Lista
Socialnih Demokratov, ZLSD), itself a successor party to the former Slovenian League
of Communists, and the new centre-right parties of the Social Democrats of Slovenia
(Slovenska demokratska stranka, SDS), the Slovenian People’s Party (Slovenska
ljudska stranka, SLS) and the Slovenian Christian Democrats (Slovenski krs�canski
demokrati, SKD) (Luksi�c 2003, pp. 522–23).
The coalition government that assumed power in 1992, comprising the LDS, the
Greens of Slovenia (Zeleni Slovenije, ZS) (which soon became irrelevant) and parties
of the moderate centre-right, engaged in political exchange with the trade union
movement which involved adopting core elements of their preferred policy, such as the
maintenance of high levels of protection for the unemployed, extensive early
retirement schemes, a cautious liberalisation of the labour market, and slow, and by
and large, internal privatisation of the state-owned enterprises (Stanojevic 1997, p.
248; Feldmann 2006; Lindstrom & Piroska 2007). These policies, which were framed
initially in the context of national unity, reflected the social democratic preferences of
the majority of the population and the dominant political forces, the salient political
narrative being the ‘social market economy’, that is, the need to balance economic
growth with social cohesion in order to preserve fairness and social harmony despite
transition to the market economy (Cox 2005, p. xi).
The type of privatisation that was pursued, which was internal and included a
significant proportion of worker and manager ownership of companies, as well as
ownership by state controlled funds, determined the structure of company ownership
in Slovenia. Managers, in a strong position before transition under Yugoslav ‘self-
management’, retained much of their influence and were able to use informal networks
which operated under the Yugoslav system between government officials and company
management structures to gain access to ownership of some of the most successful
companies (Sustersi�c 2004). The new structure of ownership and pre-existing networks
partly ensured that the employers’ side of the social dialogue would be accommodat-
ing to government and trade union policy preferences. The Chamber of Commerce
and Industry of Slovenia (Gospodarska Zbornica Slovenije, GZS), membership of
which was compulsory throughout this period, served as the main interlocutor on the
employers’ side until 1994. The Slovenian Employers’ Association (Zdruzenje
delodajalcev, ZDS), whose membership was voluntary and which represented the vast
majority of large companies in Slovenia, was formed in 1994 with the aim of replacing
GZS in due course. In a similar vein, the Slovene Chamber of Crafts, representing the
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interests of small enterprises and independent craft businesses, encouraged the
formation of the Slovene Association of Crafts. There was considerable membership
overlap between the four organisations (Stanojevic 2004).
The political and policy consensus that emerged in the early 1990s was
institutionalised in the structure of the political system and the system of industrial
relations. The Slovenian political and party systems were formed between 1988, when
the first law liberalising party competition was passed by the reformist Slovenian
League of Communists still under Yugoslavia, and 1991, when Slovenia adopted its
first Constitution (Fink-Hafner 2006). Slovenia is a unitary state with an elected
president and a bicameral parliamentary system. The National Assembly elects 90
MPs by proportional representation every four years with a 4% threshold, while the
National Council consists of 70 representatives of social partners and professional
associations (Krasove�c & Lajh 2004). A multi-party system and coalition governments
dominated by the centre-left but spanning both centre-left and centre-right became the
norm in Slovenian politics from the early 1990s.
In 1994 the tripartite corporatist regime of consultation and consensual decision-
making procedures that had emerged as a result of agreement between the political
elites and the social partners became formally institutionalised in the Economic and
Social Council, as well as in all independent or governmental authorities that
determine economic and social policy-making in Slovenia, including employment
policy-making. Any law proposed to the National Assembly that encroaches on
economic or social policy is required to come with the opinion of the Economic and
Social Council, where each of the three parties represented (government, employers
and employees) hold five seats and collectively one vote. Decisions in the ESC are
made unanimously (Stanojevic 1997).
By the mid-1990s, Slovenian employment policy-making was effectively depoliti-
cised, handled by an efficiency-oriented epistemic community (Haas 1992), operating
under a broad political consensus publicly legitimated in terms of the social market
economy which involved extensive consultation of the social partners. All interviews
point to a group of 200 people (experts, officials, social partner representatives) with a
special interest in economic, social and employment policy, meeting regularly at
various conferences, in policy-making contexts and at international events, sharing
problem definitions, information and values. Members of the policy community were
participants in transnational policy networks but they also could be seen to ‘band
together’ in the context of those networks to defend or present the ‘Slovenian
position’.18
Clearly, this did not mean that specific policy disagreements did not exist, but
simply that they were resolved consensually. Sharing common overarching values and
operating in an institutional context that could facilitate compromises would not have
been enough to secure consensus on policy change. On the contrary, both of these
features could privilege the maintenance of the status quo unless actors felt bound to a
norm of seeking consensus for change. It could be argued that consensus-seeking
norms were a part of Slovenia’s political culture. Slovenes mistrust party politics. One
explanation that has been put forward is that until 1991 Slovenia was never an
18Interview with Official F—Slovenian Trade Union Confederation, 7 September 2004, Ljubljana.
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independent state, but always a member of large multi-ethnic states including the
Austro-Hungarian Empire and the First and Second Yugoslavia. Its representatives to
the central decision-making institutions were always felt to be far removed from the
concerns of the people and essentially self-serving. Instead, Slovenes share a
generalised sympathy for functional representation, or else, the strong belief that
politics should not be about one group grasping power but about cooperative
expression and mutual accommodation of all legitimate interests. This was expressed
in Slovenia’s institutional legacy which incorporates elements of catholic corporatism,
collective functional representation, the traditions of socialist councils and Yugoslav
‘self-management’ long before the country’s independence (Luksi�c 2003). The new
system of political and institutional intermediation that emerged in independent
Slovenia could be argued to have both expressed and reaffirmed norms of searching
for consensus.
The Ministry of Labour had throughout independence been headed by ministers
coming from the parties of the centre-left, for the most part, by the reformed
communists, the United List of Social Democrats (ZLSD), a party that retained
close links with the main trade union (ZSSS) and sought to preserve as much as
possible the gains of socialism, opposing any diminution of social rights. Between
1996 and 2000 the ZLSD had left government but supported the LDS-led
coalitions in the parliament. In 1997, while in opposition, the ZLDS elected a new
leader, Bohut Pahor, who transformed the party into a party of the Third Way,
under the influence of British New Labour. At the time of the 1998 reform it was
Anton Rop, a senior LDS minister, that was in charge of the Ministry of Labour.
The LDS, a left-leaning liberal party, was keen on moderate liberalisation of the
economy and the labour market, Europeanisation and globalisation (Cabada 2005,
pp. 155–56), while being a central contributor to the ‘social market economy’
agenda.
Regarding employment policy, the Ministry, whose policy makers had become
subject to the ‘pull’ of the Luxembourg Guidelines, had greater expertise and
experience at hand with respect to the social partners. The latter had been mostly
involved in wage bargaining negotiations as well as with labour law reform in the
tripartite institutions such as the Economic and Social Council, while the broader
issues of employment policy were not at the top of their agenda (Stanojevic 2004, p.
370). While at an advantage in this respect vis-a-vis the social partners, the Ministry
nonetheless proposed a moderate activation reform agenda aimed at compromise. The
reform was framed principally in terms of domestic policy change rather than
adherence to European norms.
The consultations that took place on the 1998 changes with the social partners in the
context of the Economic and Social Council involved both the generosity and duration
of benefits and the quality of the jobs that the state should legitimately pressurise
the unemployed into accepting at the cost of cutting unemployment benefits. The
government promoted what was a moderate scaling down of passive policies on the
grounds of cost and operational efficiency as well as the new activation principle.
Trade unions insisted on the maintenance of the insurance principle and job quality,
but accepted the cutbacks on levels and duration of benefits and the activation
principle (Kopa�c 2002, pp. 5–6). Employers were in favour of the proposed changes
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and had no objections to the activation principle insofar as the reforms did not raise
labour costs on the whole.19
In 1998 the Slovenian consensual system of employment policy and policy making
became exposed to the ‘pull’ of the EES through the Ministry of Labour’s policy
makers and ‘soft’ Europeanisation ensued. The government and social partners came
to the table with similar values but different policy priorities for change which meant
that the 1998 reforms could have been openly contested. The trade unions in particular
could have contested change on the grounds of the shared social cohesion imperative,
as they were assertive and very much capable of staging opposition to reforms if need
be outside the tripartite fora. The decision-making procedures in place provided
multiple ‘veto points’ for the key actors involved had they chosen to block change.
That they did not is due to the fact that all parties were willing to seek compromise,
which was reflected in the outcome, an outcome that was accepted by all parties as
respecting the shared ‘social cohesion’ imperative.
The mediating factor for ‘soft’ Europeanisation was ultimately neither the
preferences of the key policy-making actors nor the architecture of the decision-
making framework as such. It was rather the norm of ‘searching for consensus’ that
can be argued to underlie the behaviour of key actors as well as the choice of political
and social institutions (Cox 2005, p. 153). It thus seems to have been Slovenian
political culture which facilitated change because change was legitimated through
consensus seeking, despite the lack of normative resonance between EES norms and
national policies.
Conclusions
This case study confirms that the mechanisms of ‘soft’ Europeanisation can bring
about change rather than simply reinforce pre-existing policy paths (Zeitlin 2009). It
demonstrates that normative resonance is not a necessary condition for ‘soft’
Europeanisation (Falkner et al. 2005), pointing instead to the idea that soft
Europeanisation can occur in the absence of normative resonance between EU and
domestic norms where other key domestic factors are favourable. With regard to the
domestic factors in question, the core finding of this study is the importance of
political culture, in particular the deeply rooted consensus-seeking norms, in the ‘soft’
Europeanisation of Slovenian employment policy. This finding lends strength to
Katzenstein’s argument regarding the significance of the cultural aspect of consensus,
or the deeply rooted norms of search for consensus (Katzenstein 1985) for facilitating
political change in the small corporatist states of Central Europe, as opposed to the
importance of consensus-oriented institutions (Lijphart 1999) which are argued to
render change slow and cumbersome.
Political economic factors, including the low dependence on international capital
and the structure of trade, were also crucial for ‘soft’ Europeanisation of Slovenian
employment policy because they rendered policy makers more susceptible to the ‘pull’
of European norms. The Slovenian case, whose policy makers were as eager to
19Interviews with Official B—Association of Employers of Slovenia, 26 January 2004, Ljubljana; and
Official D—Former Ministry of Labour Adviser, 9 December 2003, Ljubljana.
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disregard World Bank advice as they were to adopt advice coming from the EU,
confirms the findings in the comparative literature. It is not easy to decide if it was the
political economy or the political culture that was most important as domestic
mediating factors that facilitated ‘soft’ Europeanisation; they seem to be complemen-
tary. Norms of consensus seeking on employment policy alone might not have
facilitated change if the policy-making elites had not been susceptible to the ‘pull’ of
European norms. Likewise, the ‘pull’ of Europe might not have been sufficient for
‘soft’ Europeanisation if EES-induced changes had been politicised and publicly
contested.
Coming to the mechanisms of ‘soft’ Europeanisation, a number of scholars have
argued that there is no domestic impact of the EES without it being strategically used
by domestic actors who aim at furthering their own purposes, whether this means that
it is the government’s hand that is strengthened to pursue unpopular reforms or non-
governmental actors contesting government policy (Zeitlin 2009, pp. 231–33). This
does not preclude the possibility that domestic actors are socialised in EES norms at
the same time or in due course. What it does imply however is that contestation rather
than consensus between domestic actors is a necessary part of the process. The case of
Germany, where there was a similar lack of normative resonance between domestic
and EES norms, is an example of contested EES-induced ‘soft’ Europeanisation (Picot
2009).
The Slovenian case tells a different story. The key mechanisms of ‘soft’
Europeanisation seem to have been ‘bottom-up’ voluntary policy transfer com-
pounded by the ‘top-down’ socialisation effects of the JAP process. Both involved a
national policy community united in agreement rather than creative appropriation of
the EES by strategically oriented actors who strive to overturn the current policy
defended by other strategically oriented actors.
The Slovenian case may thus raise questions about the relative impact of ‘soft’
Europeanisation by consensus with regard to contested ‘soft’ Europeanisation.
Further comparative research could explore the possibility that consensual change
leads to ‘deeper’ Europeanisation. Consequently, in the light of the Slovenian case one
might reflect on the aims of different mechanisms of ‘soft’ Europeanisation in the
context of the EES. Given that the architecture of the ‘soft’ approach is currently
under scrutiny, it might be useful to think about which of these mechanisms encourage
domestic consensus and which, on the contrary, are likely to encourage domestic
actors to contest current arrangements.
University of Glasgow
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