DOI: 10.23662/fors-ds-1103-1
title: Political Claim-Making in the Public Domain

description: Objectives: This project aims to advance knowledge in labour politics by focusing on the 'contentious politics of unemployment', i.e. the relationship between political institutional approaches to employment policy and political conflicts mobilized by collective actors over unemployment in the public domain. It is designed to study this topic at national, international comparative, and transnational levels. Key objectives: (a) to generate new data for longitudinal and comparative analyses of ideological and policy positions of actors and their relationships; (b) to study the potential for political participation 'from below' by citizens campaigning for the rights of the unemployed and the conditions under which existing organizational networks and policy dialogues transform in a more open civil policy deliberation; (c) to provide knowledge based on rigorous cross-national and EU-level transnational analyses allowing grounded empirical statements about the Europeanisation of the field. Description: As the contested and negotiated character of the employment policy field expresses itself both in the public domain and in the institutional arenas for interest mediation, we look both at political claim-making in the public space and policy deliberation within the polity. The overall design of the research has three main components: (a) mapping the field of political contention, i.e. structures of ideological cleavages and actor relationships, both longitudinally and cross-nationally; (b) examining the nature of the multi-organizational field extending from the core policy domain to the public domain, i.e. networks and channels of political influence between core policy actors and intermediary organizations, on one side, and civil society organizations and social movements representing the unemployed (including the unemployed themselves), on the other; (c) studying the nature of the interaction between EU-level and national policy-making by determining the channels of political influence that exist between European institutions and national policy domains in the field (the multi-level governance of employment policy), and examining to what extent there are new political opportunities for the bottom-up empowerment of citizens' organizations as a consequence of the emergence of the EU as an actor in the field. A new body of data will be generated which will allow for longitudinal (1990-2002) and comparative (F, D, I, S, CH, UK) analyses of ideological and policy positions of actors and their relationships in the unemployment issue-field. This will be backed up by interviews conducted with key actors in the organizational field (policy actors, employers associations, trade unions, parties, NGOs and social movements) both at the national and transnational levels. Innovative attempts will be made to establish networks and links between the involved actors as part of our dissemination strategy, which is key to the overall success of the project. Expected results: The success of this project is underwritten by the European dimension. It will provide the first systematic cross-national comparison of the contentious politics of unemployment based on original data. It has a high potential for being a path-breaking academic study in labour politics, social movements and Europe. The findings will feedback understanding to the actors in the field, facilitated through our dissemination strategy which aims to contribute toward a constructive social dialogue.
description: Content coding
description: Codage
description: Kodierung
description: Claims which belong thematically to the issue field of unemployment.
description: Other sampling method : One national newspaper of similar affiliation for each country: Neue Zürcher Zeitung (Switzerland), Le Monde (France), La Repubblica (Italy), Süddeutsche Zeitung (Germany), Dagens Nyheter (Sweden), The Guardian (UK). Monday, Wednesday and Friday issues for each country (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday for the case of France). Period: from 1995 to 2002. All claims are coded which belong thematically to the issue field of unemployment, narrowly defined as follows. All political decisions, verbal statements, and protest actions are coded which deal with the following themes: unemployment, under-employment, joblessness, exclusion from the labor market, measures and provisions for unemployed people (including training courses, financing of unemployment insurance, and workfare). Claims referring to related fields are coded only if they explicitly refer to the issue field of unemployment. Thus, employment policy, economic development policy, and other (general or specific) issues/problems concerning the situation of the labor market or the creation of jobs are included only if the claim makes an explicit reference to unemployment, under-employment, or joblessness. This includes both these keywords and their synonymous. In addition, claims are coded also if unemployment is not the primary focus.