Soziale Sicherung bei Arbeitslosigkeit – auf dem Weg in den Dualismus? Die Hartz-Reformen in historisch-komparativer Perspektive

An influential depiction of the Hartz reforms sees them as symbolising the emergence of a dualistic form of unemployment protection, leading to sharp distinctions in public support in unemployment for labour market insiders and outsiders respectively. As dualisation of social protection is seen as particularly characteristic of the Continental European political economies, this portrayal also tends to imply that the Hartz reforms follow a distinctive logic from reforms to unemployment protection in Scandinavia and English-speaking countries. By placing the Hartz reforms in historical and comparative perspective, this article challenges the claim that they represent a shift towards a new dualism in unemployment protection, and shows that they follow a similar distributive and institutional logic to reforms enacted across most European countries since the late 1990s.