Activation Policies in Germany: From Status Protection to Basic Income Support

Although Germany has a long-standing reputation as a passive welfare state with elaborate schemes of status-protecting income replacement through social insurance in case of unemployment and a full-blown system of active labour market policies, all benefit systems had formal elements of activation and work requirement – but they had not been enforced systematically. In recent years, however, reforms of active and passive labour market policy were implemented in Germany in order to create a more activating labour market and social policy regime through awakening dormant activation principles. Changing the system of unemployment insurance benefits and basic income support as well as the repertoire of active labour market policy instruments and making benefit receipt more conditional upon job search and acceptance of job offers was a major issue on the political agenda. The reform of the benefit system also involved a major overhaul of the governance of labour market policy and has far-reaching implications for the logic of the German welfare state. All these reforms generated considerable public attention and interest from foreign observers. Yet, it remains to be seen to what extent activation is really implemented in practice and if the desired economic and societal objectives of activation could be achieved through the reforms adopted.