This article explores the diverging roles of leftwing parties and trade unions in determining active labor market program (ALMP) spending. We argue that unions today increasingly take into account the distinct re-employability worries of their members. Rather than as a labor market outsider...

Policymakers generally have powerful incentives to attract votes by strategically manipulating public policies, for instance by increasing public spending during election periods or by implementing ideologically valued policies for their electoral base. At first sight, public theaters and...

This article discusses the politics of ideas, jobs, and anger in post-communist Europe and it critically reviews Phineas Baxandall's (2004) Constructing Unemployment, and David Ost's (2005) The Defeat of Solidarity. It argues that as the new democracies in Central Europe approach the end of...