Intent and Reality of the European Employment Strategy Europeanisation of National Employment Policies and Policy-Making?

With new governance characteristics - such as mutual policy learning, exchange of best practices, or peer review - the European Employment Strategy (EES) and the Open Method of Coordination confront political actors within the EU with the new rules of policy coordination that also affect on governance structures within the European Multilevel System. This dissertation intensively deals with the different facets of the EES, analyzing its original intent and its political reality. It looks at the genesis, development, and characteristics of the EES, and in a highly elaborated and profound theory-based analysis, it examines the impact of the EES on political structures, employment policies, and underlying ideas, as well as the interplay of the EES with other supranational economic policies. In addition to the EU level analysis, the United Kingdom and Germany serve as case studies for the examination of adaptation at Member State level. In order to critically assess their applicability and validity in the given case, the book embeds this impact analysis into the academic debate on Europeanization and policy convergence. By doing so, it complements Europeanization studies on regulatory policies by analyzing the Europeanization potential and the impact of soft policy coordination within the European Multilevel Governance System. Dissertation.