The state and class discipline: European labour market policy after the financial crisis

This article looks at two related labour market policies that have persisted and even proliferated across Europe both before and after the financial crisis: wage restraint and punitive workfare programmes. It asks why these policies, despite their weak empirical records, have been so durable. Moving beyond comparative-institutionalist explanations which emphasise institutional stickiness, it draws on Marxist and Kaleckian ideas around the concept of ‘class discipline’. It argues that under financialisation, the need for states to implement policies that discipline the working class is intensified, even if these policies do little to enable (and may even counteract) future stability. Wage restraint and punitive active labour market policies are two examples of such measures. Moreover, this disciplinary impetus has subverted and marginalised regulatory labour market institutions, rather than being embedded within them.