2000년대 독일 노동시장 개혁과 복지국가의 미시적 작동방식 변화

The traditional German welfare state depended heavily on the quantity and quality of employment for successful operation. Due to full employment and the dominance of the regular employment form (Normalarbeitsverhältnis) the micro functioning between employment and unemployment insurance, and that between employment and pension insurance was almost without any major faults from 1949 until about the mid-1970's. The emergence of mass unemployment and the diversification of employment forms in the last two decades of 20th century, however, has disturbed the employment-welfare nexus on which the operation of the German welfare state had depended. The German responses to these challenges in the 1980~90s were of a Christian Democratic nature, in terms of "the trilemma of service economies". The Kohl administration moved to maintain employment quality by securing living standards through high replacement rates and long duration of payment in unemployment benefits while sacrificing full employment. The Red-Green Alliance led by Schröder, in contrast, made drastic reforms in labour market policies. Unemployment insurance reforms and activation policies initiated by the Hartz Commission represented a fundamental policy shift towards a neoliberal approach. Such policy reorientation, coupled with pension reforms, weakened the relationship between employment and public social insurances, including the loosening of earnings-related benefits in unemployment insurance, the emergence of a welfare vacuum for the atypically employed, and the weakening of public pension schemes and the corresponding strengthening of private pension schemes. All of these changes can be seen as reflecting the growing importance of self-responsibility and the decline of solidarity in German social policy principles. These institutional changes and shifts in norms pose new challenges for the German welfare state.