The State in European Employment Regulation

The aim of the paper is to examine the changing role of the state in employment regulation in an environment that has become more market-driven and Europeanised since the introduction of the European Monetary Union (EMU) and the European Employment Strategy (EES). The point of departure is a general discussion of the role of the state in capitalist development and a review on the recent debate on the spatiality of state regulation. It further suggests different ways in which the state shapes employment relations along the following dimensions: as employer, as legislator, as guarantor of employment rights and procedural regulator, in intermediating neo-corporatist processes, in macro-economic management, and as a welfare state. From this theoretical basis, the paper identifies changes in state strategies within employment regulation by comparing two periods of European integration: the post-war period and the ongoing period after the introduction of the EMU and the EES. In conclusion, the paper asserts that there has been a transition in the ways the state ‘intervenes’ in the economy and shapes the different dimensions of employment relations from a governing and legislating towards a steering and advising mode.